I can’t say this link about Utah’s mail-in voting was what I expected to focus on this morning, but that’s one of the joys of this job. You never know what you’re going to wind up with, no matter how much you think you do.
As a Utahn, I can tell you our mail-in system is, if not perfect, damn impressive. I have no doubt my vote is being counted for any number of reasons. 1) I can track my ballot. 2) I can return my ballot to selected drop boxes if I don’t trust the mail. 3) In 2023, my completed ballot was returned to me because my signature didn’t match my voter registration card. This last quite frankly blew my mind, and not in a bad way. Depending on time restraints or the formality of a document, I sign my name one of two ways. As far as my ballot went, my signatures didn’t match. So they sent it back to me to confirm my identity and, just as important, count my vote. The system worked.
And as we saw from all the swing state audits from 2020, the system worked then. Bill Barr, Trump’s former Attorney General and current endorser, even said at the time that there was no proof of fraud on a scale that could sway the election. Arizona’s full state audit uncovered just a few fraudulent votes… for Donald Trump. Georgia’s audit: again, no dice. In fact, the Fulton County election workers video-taped pulling “suitcases of votes” out from under tables after supervisors had supposedly left had done nothing wrong. (Now, did it look suspicious? Yes. But then all surveillance tape footage looks suspicious. Just check the bank of monitors next time you're in a gas station and see if you don’t look guilty.) If you doubt the ladies’ innocence, check Rudy Giuliani’s roster of evidence in their defamation trial against him. He had none, which is why he’s involuntarily transitioned from practicing law to selling coffee.
This isn’t to say everything in our voting system is perfect. Some of the electoral law changes in 2020 were, put kindly, a reach. No state needs to be accepting ballots three days after Election Day. But those changes applied to all voters, and they were upheld in multiple court cases, some of which were presided over by Republican-appointed judges. So, again, the system, imperfect as it may be at times, worked. It doesn’t need to be dismantled, just improved where necessary. Let’s not lose sight of that as we reach the end of this election season.