8. Can I mail myself in a (ballot) box?

So a big part of elections is mail-in voting.

For both the 2022 and the 2024 elections, about one in three Americans voted by mail regardless of party affiliation, regardless of political identity.

You know, I think a lot of times mail-in voting and absentee ballots are kind of assumed to be a partisan issue, but they're really not.

Everyone ad- um, is advantaged by the concept of voting by mail.

Another idea with mail-in voting is that especially with this election, right now a lot of people are concerned by things like ICE agents potentially being at polling sites, and for that reason, there may be more voters who want to do things like voting by mail or voting earlier, absentee voting in general.

So that's another reason why it's super, super relevant to this election, and we need to make sure that people have access to those different mechanisms of voting and those different means of voting, which is why we're talking about this.

We're gonna go over a little history.

Yeah.

My favorite.

There was this really cool Times Magazine article that Emma and I were reading while we were researching for this episode, and it takes you through a little bit of the history of mail-in voting.

One thing that stood out to me is there's this guy named Alex Keyssar who wrote a book about the right to vote, and in this m- magazine they're quoting him, they're talking about how in the 17th century, Massachusetts actually allowed for certain men to vote by mail back when they were all colonists still, because they were worried that their houses or their homes might be vulnerable to Indian attack, quote, unquote.

Yeah, and I think that's also kind of crazy because I think a lot of people assume that absentee ballots and mail-in voting and early voting are kind of new things, especially because of the pandemic.

I think a lot of people think that mail-in voting only existed because of that, but that's really false.

And interestingly enough, I think as I was talking about, a lot of people assume that these measures are very new since the pandemic, but they've actually existed all throughout American history, and actually have some really interesting military origins.

So throughout American history, a lot of soldiers have voted by mail.

Um, notably in the Civil War, 78% of the military vote went to Lincoln.

Something similar happened during World War II when there was an enfranchisement of people in service during World War II.

So there was this thing that Congress passed called the Soldier Voting Act of 1942, and it basically allowed all members of the military overseas, no matter where they were, to send in their ballots abroad and to have their vote be counted, and supported absentee registration.

To move down the timeline a little bit more from World War II, in roughly 1952, President Harry Truman gave an address to Congress in which he was trying to get something passed called the Servicemen's Bill of Voting Rights, and this is just continuing the discussion of how mail-in voting has been used to sort of support the military whenever they're abroad.

This Servicemen's Bill of Voting Rights is really interesting to me because it included things like ex- You know, they should have the people who are in service should have the right to vote without registering in person or vote without paying a poll tax.

So it's almost creating like this, the way that we have the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, it's trying to create a bill for people who are in the army.

And interestingly, they said men and women in this address, men and women who are in service.

So, you know, for 1952, that's kinda cool.

Yeah, pretty good.

Yeah, it's really interesting that mail-in voting had such a big military history, and you can kind of see it transitioning from just soldiers into applying more as a general rule in the '70s.

So a big part of elections is mail-in voting.

For both the 2022 and the 2024 elections, about one in three Americans voted by mail regardless of party affiliation, regardless of political identity.

You know, I think a lot of times mail-in voting and absentee ballots are kind of assumed to be a partisan issue, but they're really not.

Everyone ad- um, is advantaged by the concept of voting by mail.

Another idea with mail-in voting is that especially with this election, right now a lot of people are concerned by things like ICE agents potentially being at polling sites, and for that reason, there may be more voters who want to do things like voting by mail or voting earlier, absentee voting in general.

So that's another reason why it's super, super relevant to this election, and we need to make sure that people have access to those different mechanisms of voting and those different means of voting, which is why we're talking about this.

We're gonna go over a little history.

Yeah.

My favorite.

There was this really cool Times Magazine article that Emma and I were reading while we were researching for this episode, and it takes you through a little bit of the history of mail-in voting.

One thing that stood out to me is there's this guy named Alex Keyssar who wrote a book about the right to vote, and in this m- magazine they're quoting him, they're talking about how in the 17th century, Massachusetts actually allowed for certain men to vote by mail back when they were all colonists still, because they were worried that their houses or their homes might be vulnerable to Indian attack, quote, unquote.

Yeah, and I think that's also kind of crazy because I think a lot of people assume that absentee ballots and mail-in voting and early voting are kind of new things, especially because of the pandemic.

I think a lot of people think that mail-in voting only existed because of that, but that's really false.

And interestingly enough, I think as I was talking about, a lot of people assume that these measures are very new since the pandemic, but they've actually existed all throughout American history, and actually have some really interesting military origins.

So throughout American history, a lot of soldiers have voted by mail.

Um, notably in the Civil War, 78% of the military vote went to Lincoln.

Something similar happened during World War II when there was an enfranchisement of people in service during World War II.

So there was this thing that Congress passed called the Soldier Voting Act of 1942, and it basically allowed all members of the military overseas, no matter where they were, to send in their ballots abroad and to have their vote be counted, and supported absentee registration.

To move down the timeline a little bit more from World War II, in roughly 1952, President Harry Truman gave an address to Congress in which he was trying to get something passed called the Servicemen's Bill of Voting Rights, and this is just continuing the discussion of how mail-in voting has been used to sort of support the military whenever they're abroad.

This Servicemen's Bill of Voting Rights is really interesting to me because it included things like ex- You know, they should have the people who are in service should have the right to vote without registering in person or vote without paying a poll tax.

So it's almost creating like this, the way that we have the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, it's trying to create a bill for people who are in the army.

And interestingly, they said men and women in this address, men and women who are in service.

So, you know, for 1952, that's kinda cool.

Yeah, pretty good.

Yeah, it's really interesting that mail-in voting had such a big military history, and you can kind of see it transitioning from just soldiers into applying more as a general rule in the '70s.