Civics: “it is now possible to vote in person without any form of identification”
If the average American ever thinks about the Horn of Africa, they likely imagine it as one of those interchangeably poor and faraway places that is many decades behind advanced Western countries like our own. Yet in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, it is now possible to vote in person without any form of identification. In Michigan, you can vote without a photo ID, as long as you sign an affidavit saying you don’t have one. Unlike Somalilanders, most Americans no longer have to physically show up at a polling place to vote. Instead they have the choice of filling out and submitting their ballots beyond the observation of election officials, which means there is no assurance that the people in whose names ballots are cast actually signed—or saw—their ballots, voted free of duress or the promise of some benefit, or are even still alive.
In the 2020 election, more than two-thirds of voters exercised their franchise by mail or before election day—meaning that election day itself was a mass civic formality, rather than the deciding event of a long campaign. The same is likely to be true this year. At least 20 states now open the voting more than three weeks before the campaign ends. Fifty days before an election, Pennsylvania begins holding “in-person absentee” voting, where a ballot can be filled out and submitted in a location that does not have poll watchers present or any of the privacy safeguards of a normal polling station. Thirty-six states, including every 2024 swing state in the presidential election, now either have all-mail elections in which a ballot is automatically sent to every registered voter, or no-excuse absentee voting in which any voter can ask to vote by mail for any reason. In a number of states, including Arizona, a voter only has to register as an absentee once in order to receive a ballot in the mail in every subsequent election. According to the National Vote at Home Institute, the eight states with all-mail elections automatically send out at least 77 million ballots each cycle.
