Remote voting, initiated by the Democratic Party, is already overgrown with problems, as about 60% of citizens in 9 competitive states did not receive ballots.
ProPublica collaborates with The Guardian to publish statistics from North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is in these states that a fierce battle is unfolding between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the presidential election.
The data collected by the authors of the study shows that of the 62.6 million registered voters in nine states, 20.4 million chose to vote remotely. Fearing the coronavirus, 32.6% of citizens requested the sending of ballots by mail. However, only 8.2 million voters received ballots. Thus, 60% of citizens who decided to vote remotely still did not receive their ballots.
The problem is not unexpected. The expert community has repeatedly warned that the American electoral system is not ready for such a drastic transition to voting by mail. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in particular, studied the situation in the 2008 elections. Then some of the Americans also voted remotely, and 3.9 million voters did not receive their ballots; 2.9 million ballots sent out simply disappeared without being returned to election officials; another 800 thousand ballots were not accepted for various reasons. Against this backdrop, even the OSCE questions the legitimacy of the elections.