I see this come up a lot in discussions about voting in America. Postal votes disproportionately go to Democrats, hence the Democrats want to expand postal voting while Republicans want to restrict it (and insist there is totally a bunch of fraud going on).
I’ve googled with a few search engines and haven’t found a convincing reason. Lots of evidence that the skew is real, but no explanation as to why. Indeed, if one just looks at demographics, one would expect postal voting to benefit Republicans by facilitating votes from people in the countryside who live far away from voting centers.
So what actually gives?
States with Republican control also have weird rules limiting number of polling places. Sometimes it’s like “1 polling location per county” where a rural county of 5,000 does just fine with 1 polling location. But then a city with millions of people also gets 1. The goal is to create lines around the block in cities, where people will simply give up rather than vote. Cities favor Democrats, so Republicans try to limit voter turnout in cities.
Voting by mail completely eliminates these artificial hurdles.
WTF? Is this true? That’s insane! My mid/east European village with 2,5k people (including children) has 4 polling locations so nobody can argue it’s too far for them. It’s also possible to register yourself beforehand and than you can vote wherever you want (either inside the country or at embassy abroad).