Homebound, nursing home or military should be the only reason to vote by mail. If voting absentee, a request and reason should be necessary. If you can go to Walmart, Home Depot or the grocery store, or play the lottery, then you can vote in person.
All absentee ballots are sent to the election board, where they are verified, scanned and securely stored and mandated to be returned one week prior to Election Day.
A solution is to issue a “credit card style” voter card that contains your name, address, municipality, voting ward and a voter ID number. Technology makes it possible for this to be a reusable card with a PIN . Voting machines could be updated to read the one-time-use-per-election cards that would be reset afterwards to be reused. You could vote, make corrections, verify it and receive a voting receipt — once per election. Because absentee ballots already would be in, no one would be able to vote twice. Once the voting polls close, voting is done.
This could be paid for with a 10% tax on all political advertising. Money would be used to update the machines and manufacture, distribute and reset the cards. National election funds would be divided between states and county election boards; state election ad money would be divided between counties; and local funding would go to the county boards.
This would simplify the voting process. Overall mail-in scale never should be used again, greatly reducing possible voter fraud.
Eugene Pagani
Beaver Falls