Dear Editor:
In his letter of Aug. 28, Mr. John Woolaver makes a valid point with regard to the confusion surrounding absentee voting and voting by mail.
Between misleading statements by our president and mailings from groups like the Center for Voter Information, it’s easy to see how a person could be led to believe that the resulting confusion could lead to fraud.
Let’s be clear: voting by mail involves obtaining and returning an absentee ballot. There is no special “vote by mail” ballot. “Absentee voting” and “Vote by Mail” are two names for the same thing.
You must be a registered voter to receive an absentee ballot. Mr. Woolaver received an application for an absentee ballot, not the ballot itself. The package sent by the Center for Voter Information was insufficient in making the distinction between the application and the ballot clear.
The belief that fraud is an inevitable result of voting by mail is false. Surveys of past elections demonstrate that the rate of voting fraud overall in the U.S. is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice.
John Boddie,
Onancock
