(Washington = Yonhap News) Correspondent Hong Jeong-gyu = Unlike Korea, where voting in person at a polling place is common, the United States allows mail-in voting. Approximately 30% of all votes are mail-in ballots. Because the area is so vast, there are many places where it is difficult to vote in person, and in some states, election day is not a public holiday.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), in 37 of the 50 states and Washington DC, there is no special reason, but in the remaining 13 states, it is possible only if there are certain reasons such as illness, travel, or old age. You write the candidate's name on the mail-in ballot, put it in the mailbox, and a United States Postal Service (USPS) truck picks it up.
There are also cases where one's mail-in ballot is invalidated. In some states, ballots are invalidated if they arrive at the election office after Election Day. In some states, delivery within Election Day is acceptable, but it must be postmarked by USPS by Election Day.
Most mail-in ballots that are invalidated are cases where ballots were mailed close to election day, but the fact that the USPS reduced the number of times it transports mail arriving at local post offices to processing centers in an effort to cut costs also had an impact. When it arrives at the mail processing center, it is stamped by a machine.
The 'ballot collection box' was designed to resolve the uncertainty of voting by mail. It is not difficult to find ballot collection boxes throughout the United States where mail-in voting is underway ahead of the midterm elections in November. Just insert your mail-in ballot here.
Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C., allow the installation of ballot collection boxes by law. CNN reported on the 7th (local time) that this ballot collection box has recently been upgraded with state-of-the-art equipment.
In some collection boxes, when the internal temperature rises above a certain level or movement or impact is detected, a notification is sent to the person in charge of the bin. There is also a device that automatically blocks the air to extinguish the fire and a collection box equipped with a surveillance camera.
The states of Pennsylvania, Illinois and California have spent millions of dollars to create a new generation of high-tech bins that combine tamper-evident designs, fire protection features and digital tracking records. The person inserting the ballot is filmed, and the ballot envelope is scanned and compared.
The reason is that ballot collection boxes have become the target of attacks on election fraud conspiracy theories. After President Donald Trump failed to be re-elected in the 2020 presidential election, theories of election fraud spread, and bombings and fires at ballot collection boxes followed. A recent example is the burning of ballots in a ballot collection box for the primary election in Los Angeles, California, last June.
President Trump believes that mail-in voting and ballot collection boxes are being used for election fraud. When an attempt to push for a law effectively banning mail-in voting failed, an executive order was issued through the USPS to restrict it, but the Federal Supreme Court blocked it.
The documentary film '2000 Mules', produced by the conservative camp, claimed that in the 2020 presidential election, 2,000 transporters who received money from Democratic Party non-profit organizations went from house to house collecting mail-in ballots and putting them in collection boxes. This was refuted as unfounded.
Ballot collection boxes also reflect the political color of the region. Ballot collection boxes are banned in about 10 states, including Republican-led Texas and North Carolina. In Wisconsin, collection boxes were banned when the state Supreme Court was conservative, but allowed when the Supreme Court changed to a liberal one.
Washington State Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said, "We are urging voters to use ballot drop boxes rather than mailboxes. And if you are going to use the mailbox, just send it in early."
When using a mailbox, considering the delivery period in remote areas, it is said to be safe to send it 14 days before election day, or at least 7 days before. In Oregon, stamps are only issued at a processing center in Portland, a distance of 500 miles (approximately 804 km) from the southwestern tip of the state.
The USPS announced that it will implement 'special measures' such as additional mail collection, holiday collection, and expedited processing to speed up ballot delivery starting on the 24th, as election day approaches.
