The repercussions of the spread of the new Corona epidemic (Covid-19) gave the postal vote a lot of unprecedented attention to this phenomenon, as it became an important partisan issue with it, at a time when the position of US President Donald Trump added more excitement to this issue.

Trump reiterated his objections to voting by mail, and said in a tweet via tweeting that foreign governments and unnamed destinations would seek to interfere in them and forge them by printing millions of votes unless this was stopped.

He considered that the Americans voted during the First and Second World Wars without any problem, but he pointed out that some people use the Corona pandemic to cheat and make the elections the scandal of the times, according to his expression.

However, the President's allegations are politicized, and are not supported by any evidence or evidence.

The United States leads the world in death rates in Corona (Reuters)

Choice and goals

Postal voting means that the voter is allowed to vote without leaving his home by completing the ballot paper that he sends to the election supervising committee through his federal service.

The purpose of providing this service is to facilitate the voters and exercise their constitutional right even if they are exposed to a health crisis that prevents them from leaving their home or hospital, or in the event of bad weather or with conditions that witness a pandemic, it becomes dangerous with him to go to the polling stations and wait for hours in long lines.

The US elections differ from other elections around the world in two basic points. The first of them relates to their conduct on the first Tuesday in November, which is a working day and is not considered a holiday in any way.

Second, each of the 50 states organizes their elections in different ways and does not violate any standards imposed by the federal government. The decentralization of elections allows for different methods and methods to exist from one state to another.

The poor and minorities do not vote in large proportions compared to whites (Al Jazeera)

The essence of the objection

Traditionally, the poor and minorities do not vote as much as they do when white citizens vote. These marginalized groups vote in greater proportions for Democrats, and this is the essence of Trump and Republicans' opposition, as the postal vote will mainly serve the Democratic Party by expanding the numbers of voters from minorities and the poor.

According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology electoral data lab, America began electronic voting during the Civil War of 1860 when soldiers were allowed to vote by mail from the battlefields.

With the end of the 19th century, election laws in various states expanded to allow postal voting of patients and travelers away from their places of residence, and then increased the resort to postal voting during the First and Second World Wars.

Millions of American voters exercised their right to vote by mail during the past elections.

Pedigree and Cases

The fifty states, in addition to the capital, Washington, currently allow an increasing proportion of their population to vote by mail, and the states send the voter a ballot, and in many cases the state requires the voter as evidence of his inability to vote by traditional methods.

The method of securing postal voting varies, as some states are satisfied with only the signature of the voter, while others require the documentation of the ballot, and in third cases the state requires witnesses while filling the ballot.

To date, 46 states have agreed to allow expanded voting by mail due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus pandemic, and the party affiliation of state governors has played no role in the issue of allowing postal voting to be used.

Of those states, 24 are headed by a Democratic governor, while 22 are headed by a Republican.

Republicans control the movement opposing postal voting, and party leaders preside over the four states that have not expanded the postal vote.

"The fear of being infected with the Covid-19 virus is not sufficient reason to consider it a health barrier to personal voting as state statutes provide," said Texas State Minister Ken Paxton, Texas, and pledged to prosecute those voters who would vote by mail without justification.

Election experts estimate that 70% of Americans can vote by mail in the November presidential election, which represents a significant jump from the 40% in 2016, or 57.2 million voters. This, in turn, represents a significant increase in the percentage of mailed voters in the 2004 elections, which did not exceed 20% or 24.9 million voters.

An opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center at the end of last April indicated that 70% of the respondents agreed on the need to allow postal voting for those who wish to do so, and the percentage among Republicans drops to 49% only.

Trump said he believed expansion of the postal vote would not be in the interests of the Republican Party (Reuters)

Trump's goals

Trump did not hide the real motive behind his attack on the expansion of the postal vote, as he said, "The expansion of the postal vote will be bad for the Republican Party," despite the lack of accuracy of this claim.

A Stanford University study revealed that there were no differences between Republican and Democratic voters between those who voted by mail compared to voters by traditional polling.

Republicans fear that people will fill out the ballot papers on behalf of the voters themselves, and express their fear that Democrats will exploit these loopholes to alter the outcome of the election.

On the other hand, Democrats believe that mailing gives more opportunity to marginalized and poorer groups and those who cannot vote on their own for work hours reasons.

Positions and records

"The postal vote can allow non-nationals to vote as there is no need to display an identity card to confirm the identity and legitimacy of the voter," said Rodney Davis, a Republican from Illinois, according to an article published by the Fox News website.

Justice Minister William Barr also expressed the occurrence of fraud by foreign countries that can copy the ballot papers "and re-send them after filling them and in this way contribute to controlling the election results."

Despite Trump and his administration's accusations of the idea of ​​expanding voting and using a justification that postal voting would allow fraud and tampering with election results, MIT experts responded to these allegations and proved otherwise.

A study in which records of 250 million ballot papers were examined - during the past twenty years - that there were fraud cases in only 143 cases in which judicial rulings were issued, which is 0.00006%, which is much less than the percentage of violations by personal polling.

Some congressional committees are considering bills that allow full expansion of the postal vote, with which all Americans can vote by mail, but the Republican majority in the Senate places many obstacles to these proposals.

For his part, the Republican governor of Pennsylvania Ridge and the former Secretary of Homeland Security expressed his frustration with what Trump mentioned. "This is a very disappointing thing for Senators who support the expansion of voting by mail when they see the president say directly: Don't use mail to vote," he said in an interview with National Radio.

Republicans are fighting expansion of mailing to many US courts, in an attempt to stem the expansion they see as a nightmare that the White House might cost them.