Introduction

The Integrity of Mail Voting in the 2020 Election:

A National Survey

Funding Provided by the National Science Foundation

Lonna Atkeson, University of New Mexico

Trey Hood, University of Georgia

Mason Reece and Robert Stein, Rice University

In response to the COVID-19 virus, many states adopted and expanded opportunities for voters to cast their ballot by mail and in other ways to avoid contracting and spreading the COVID-19 virus in the 2020 Presidential Election. Approximately 75% (New York Times 2020) of all voters in the 2020 Presidential election were be eligible to submit their ballot by some form of mail assisted voting.

Critics of mail assisted voting have identified a number of shortcomings with this mode of voting that may impact the integrity of the ballot cast and the secrecy of a voter’s ballot choices.   Both conditions can lead to voter fraud and voter coercion. These concerns remain largely untested and unexamined. The absence of reliable and independent measures of the integrity of mail assisted voting potentially undermines voters’ confidence in the outcome elections where a high share of the vote is cast by mail. To answer these questions and to explore voters’ experiences in the 2020 election we surveyed voters (N=~20,000) in all the 50 states to measure when, where, and with whom they completed their ballot and how their ballot was returned.

Surveys were conducted online, with 2020 voters in all 50 states.  Email addresses for 1.2 million voters were purchased from several commercial vendors of voter files.  Surveys were solicited and completed between November 11, 2020 and February 9, 2021.  Responses were weighted to represent the national share of vote cast in each state and for selected demographics from the American Community Survey including age, gender, race/ethnicity, education and party preference

Frequencies for each survey question are reported below in six sections including:

  1. Voting frequencies for Presidential candidate and mode of voting by state
  2. Vote by mail experience
  3. In-person voting experience
  4. Overall voting experience
  5. Election security
  6. Voter traits and policy preferences

We also report several survey questions by respondent’s method of voting in 2020, their party affiliation and Presidential candidate preference.

To see the frequencies for the 2020 survey please visit this webpage.