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Democracy doesn&rsquo;t come cheap, and maintaining our republic requires participation.
				I disagree with &ldquo;no excuse&rdquo; mail-in voting because it makes our most vital institution super convenient at the expense of secure elections. It &ldquo;solves&rdquo; a non-existent problem, opens up elections to fraud, allows big money to manipulate elections, and decreases our sense of community.
				Elections are already free, accessible and widely open to the voting public. After a first-time voter casts a ballot in Pennsylvania they never have to present a valid ID again. For people with disabilities or work constraints there is already a solution: It is called absentee voting, and it has been available for decades. Voting is already more accessible and convenient than taking out a library book.
				Enterprising individuals who are paid by wealthy campaigns or political parties can now go to where concentrations of people live such as elderly high rises and subsidized apartment buildings, fill out the ballot application, and return when the mail-in ballot shows up.
				They can make sure to bring a book of stamps or drop them off by themselves. The practice is called &ldquo;ballot harvesting,&rdquo; and the best example comes from California which in 2018 resulted in unprecedented waves of seats going to liberal candidates. Clark County, Nevada is currently raising red flags.
				Anyone who does research finds that mail-in balloting devolves into taking advantage of holes in the process. While we are in an unprecedented situation with the COVID, voting could have been handled temporarily with absentees. It&rsquo;s no coincidence that the voter can choose to receive mail-in ballots for every election going forward &#8230; just in time for the 2020 presidential reelection. The president&mdash;and many Pennsylvanians&mdash;are rightfully skeptical.
				Lastly, voters come to the polling place and talk about the issues of the day, swap stories about how the kids are doing, and remark about the weather. It&rsquo;s the kind of encounter that happens very rarely &#8230; kind of like one you have at a wedding or a funeral. The community benefits by seeing each other in late spring and the first week in November.
				Mail-in voting will inevitably make our society more convenient, yet like most changes in the Internet Age, more distant and open to manipulation.

Their view: ‘No-excuse,’ mail-in voting wrong for democracy