A Pendleton County mail carrier was charged this week with attempted election fraud for allegedly changing five absentee ballot requests from Democrat to Republican.
As non-partisan experts across the nation have recognized, misconduct or fraud in the absentee voting process is “exceedingly rare, with mailed ballots or otherwise.”
This case also illustrates that the safeguards put in place to spot fraud attempts are working. The charges in this case should not undermine faith in our absentee voting system, but rather reinforce it.
Nationally, the number of fraud attempts regarding mail-in ballots number in the hundreds over a 20-year period. During that period, some 250 million ballots were cast. This shows us that instances of attempted fraud are quite rare.
These isolated incidents should not prevent West Virginians from continuing to have the right to safely vote by mail.