PD Editorial: Voting by mail is a trustworthy plan for a safe election

For more than three years, President Donald Trump has stubbornly dismissed reports of foreign meddling in the 2016 election.

Now, facing a reelection fight, the Trump administration apparently is desperate for ammunition in its assault on plans in California and other states to hold mail elections this fall to ensure that people can cast ballots without risking exposure to the coronavirus.

Attorney General William Barr, in an interview with the New York Times, imagined mailboxes filled with counterfeit ballots printed by Russians or other provocateurs.

“There are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in,” Barr said. “And it'd be very hard to sort out what's happening.”

Give the attorney general this much - a foreign country, even a domestic miscreant, could print bogus ballots and send them in.

However, it wouldn't be difficult to sort out what's happening.

Legitimate mail ballots have bar codes and identification numbers for verification, which can be tracked by county election officials and individual voters. Mail ballots must be returned inside a signed envelope, then another envelope for mailing. Signatures are verified before a ballot is counted.

For the sake of argument, let's assume some foreign power - or even Trump's proverbial “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” - managed to match ID numbers, bar codes and individual voter signatures. They also would need the right combination of offices and measures; Sonoma County had 47 different ballots in March and 127 in November 2018, according to Clerk-Recorder Deva Marie Proto.

Even then, election officials logging in mail ballots would be alerted to the scam by the arrival of multiple ballots for individual registered voters.

Barr surely knows all of that. But he's a loyal soldier, and Trump routinely claims that mail voting leads to fraud.

Five states already hold all of their elections by mail, and three of them - Oregon, Washington and Colorado - send ballots to all registered voters.

In California, where voters can request a mail ballot, 72% of the 9.7 million ballots cast statewide in March were vote-by-mail. In Sonoma County, it was over 80%.

With no assurance that the coronavirus will be under control by November, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered counties to mail ballots to all registered voters. Ballots can be returned by mail or dropped off at voting centers. There would be about 30 in Sonoma County, each open for four days.

The state and national Republican parties have filed a lawsuit challenging Newsom's order. GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, are opposing legislation in Sacramento that would write the governor's order into state law. Like Trump, they claim mail ballots carry a heightened risk of fraud.

Study after study has debunked those claims, and five years of Justice Department investigations during the George W. Bush administration found some mistakes and lapses but virtually no organized voter fraud.

If the coronavirus isn't contained, many voters are likely to be uneasy about going to the polls in November. They should be. The volunteers who staff polling stations would be taking a risk too. There have been instances during the primaries where poll workers came down with the virus. Mail voting is a smart precaution.

With Trump's complaints, like the GOP lawsuits, targeting blue states such as California and battleground states including Michigan and Nevada, his real concern appears to be a big turnout of unfriendly voters.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.