On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law that will ensure registered voters are automatically mailed a ballot whether they request one or not, legislation that will make voting in the state far more accessible.
The law codifies and makes permanent a policy that was implemented in order to address voting complications during the coronavirus pandemic. California voters were sent their ballots automatically in the 2020 general election, as well as in the recent 2021 gubernatorial recall race.
“California is now PERMANENTLY a vote-by-mail state,” Newsom wrote in a tweet celebrating the development. “Because we believe in making voting EASIER and for every voice to be heard.”
California now joins a small handful of states, including Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah, that send ballots to voters automatically. However, if Golden State voters wish to cast their vote in person, they’re still able to do so under the new law.
Voting by mail has been linked to increases in voter participation in places where the option is available. During the 2020 election alone, California saw its voter turnout increase to around 70 percent, the highest rate the state has seen in more than six decades of voting, no doubt due in part to mailing ballots to every eligible voter. Automatically sending ballots out to voters has been particularly beneficial to historically disenfranchised communities.
Some lauded the policy change as one that should be implemented in other parts of the country as well.
“Vote by mail allows everyone equal access to our democracy,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) wrote on Twitter. “Time to take it nationwide!”
The chances of a similar policy being implemented in other states are low, however — Republicans have generally been against such moves, falsely claiming that the practice is linked to higher instances of voter fraud, and that expanding access to voting by mail only benefits Democrats.
Both ideas have been refuted by several studies.
“There is no evidence that mail balloting increases electoral fraud as there are several anti-fraud protections built into the process designed to make it difficult to impersonate voters or steal ballots,” the Brookings Institute noted last summer, citing research from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
A Stanford University study also looked at the impact of universal voting by mail procedures and found that the policy doesn’t give an advantage to either party — in fact, such voting methods produce partisan outcomes that “closely resemble in-person elections,” the study’s authors concluded.
Polling also reveals that the American people want voting by mail expanded, not limited. A Monmouth University poll from June of this year found that 69 percent of voters across the country supported “establishing national guidelines to allow vote by mail and in-person early voting in federal elections in every state,” while just 25 percent opposed the idea. Half of the respondents in the poll (50 percent) also expressed an eagerness to make voting by mail easier, while only 39 percent said it should be harder to do.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.