When you hear concerns about election integrity and vote counting, surely that’s nothing more than the stolen election fever dreams of the conspiratorial Right. Right? Claiming that anything might go wrong with our voting system is just misinformation. Right? Certainly, you’d never hear such things from the mainstream media unless they were chastising conservatives as “election deniers.” Right?

Wrong.

“Election officials warn that widespread problems with the US mail system could disrupt voting,” headlines the Associated Press. CBS News says, “State and local officials warn delays in election-related mail could disenfranchise voters.” And The New York Times adds, “Top Election Officials Warn Postal Service of Mail Ballot Issues.”

Here’s the problem in a nutshell, according to the AP:

In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.

It’s almost like it’s not a good idea to entrust your vote to the U.S. Postal Service.

Don’t believe me? Ask Jimmy Carter and James Baker, who co-chaired the Commission on Federal Election Reform in 2005 and said that mail-in ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Few other countries have a two-month mail-in and early-voting process like we do.

Of course, the Left’s real bogeyman remains Donald Trump, who, in Tuesday night’s debate, still declined to accept the 2020 election results. Trump is often maddeningly unclear on his complaints, though. In contrast, we’ve been crystal clear: Bulk-mail ballots altered the 2020 election by the drastically increased presence, and they were almost certainly a key source of (nigh undetectable) fraud.

As our Mark Alexander wrote one year ago:

Of the votes cast in 2020, 43% (66 million ballots) were cast by mail — and a majority of those were in states where authentication of the person receiving and casting the ballot is not required. Of all those who voted in person, 66% voted for Trump versus 42% for Biden — which is to say that 58% of Biden ballots, almost 47 million votes, were cast by mail.

The AP notes that in 2020, “amid the global pandemic, election officials reported sending just over 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.” Whether that trend continues in a non-pandemic year remains to be seen, but it’s likely that the ease of voting by mail will continue to be attractive to many voters.

The first mail-in ballots were sent to Alabama voters yesterday. And, by the way, Pennsylvania officials have already practically promised that they won’t know the results on election night.

The Left’s rejoinder is almost always that there was “no evidence of widespread voter fraud” in 2020. Well, it doesn’t take anything widespread. We repeatedly note that Joe Biden won four years ago not by seven million votes (which were mostly in New York and California) but by 43,000 votes in just three states. A little trouble with mail-in ballots in Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia might have changed the election outcome. It could again.

And we may never know with the certainty required to avoid a Leftmedia “fact-check.”

By the way, remember two key things: First, more than 525,000 Postal Service workers handle more than 116 billion pieces of mail each year, and those workers are unionized — which tends to favor Democrats. Moreover, notes The New York Times, “The Postal Service is in the middle of a sweeping overhaul in an effort to stabilize its finances, after losses of $87 billion over the past 14 years.” The Times singles out Atlanta as a problem spot due to these changes. That sounds promising for reliable delivery and trustworthy results in Georgia, doesn’t it?

How many of us have mail delivered late or to the wrong address? How many of us receive mail meant for people who formerly lived in our house? Think that sort of thing doesn’t happen with bulk-mail ballots — especially if a particular Democrat union worker doesn’t like the Republican mail you receive?

Second, one in five mail-in voters admitted to cheating in 2020. One in five. Personally, I’d imagine that Trump-deranged people are more likely to cheat the system in the name of “saving democracy.” But maybe that’s just me.

The way to secure our elections is simple: Voting should be in person with photo ID on Election Day. Until then, however, Republicans must step up their get-out-the-vote operations if they have any hope of beating Democrats. But if National Review’s Noah Rothman, admittedly no fan of Trump, is correct, the GOP’s poorly crafted and staffed operation “should make Republicans nervous.”

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