Can someone else submit my absentee ballot for me?
What is absentee voting?
Absentee voting, also called mail-in voting, is when someone requests an absentee ballot – because they will not be able to show up and vote in-person on election day – and votes by mail.
Absentee voting is nearly identical to mail-in voting, except for the fact that they need to actively request an absentee ballot.
Can someone else submit my absentee ballot for me?
The rules regarding requesting absentee ballots vary from state-to-state, as do the rules for how absentee ballots can be submitted, including ballot collection (ballot collection is when another person collects and submits ballots for others).
Currently, 31 states allow another person to submit your absentee ballot for you.
Why would someone let another person turn in their absentee ballot for them?
Sometimes people are unable to return their absentee ballot in person to a polling place or cannot get to a post office to mail the ballot back. Typically this is because they are either sick, disabled, infirm, or elderly. For example, the writer of this piece once dropped an absentee ballot off in a post office collection box for their landlady because she recently had knee replacement surgery and couldn’t walk.
Does ballot collection lead to voter fraud?
No, though there are a few examples of individuals who broke the law and were caught for related reasons.
The idea that ballot collection leads to voter fraud comes from three different ideas.
- States that have laws on the books regulating the practice do this because they have a general concern that allowing people to submit ballots on behalf of others will lead to them persuading voters voting by mail to vote in a certain way.
- Opponents of ballot collection take these legitimate concerns a step further and allege that political operatives find groups of people and persuade them or trick them to vote in a certain way. These allegations can take a variety of forms, including that they pay people to vote a certain way or they find ineligible voters (e.g. undocumented immigrants) and get them to vote. There is no evidence to support that this happens.
- Opponents of ballot collection who object to the practice call it ballot harvesting in an attempt to reframe and delegitimize the process in negative terms.
What should I know before I let someone else submit my absentee ballot for me?
Before you give your ballot to a relative, friend, or another third party individual:
- Make sure that it is legal to do so in your state;
- Make sure it is properly and completely filled out, signed, and sealed; and
- Make sure that the person or organization you are handing your ballot off to is legitimate.
One overlooked concern that opponents of ballot collection fail to raise is that political operatives can collect ballots for others and then throw them away or destroy them, ensuring that their votes are never cast.
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