Dick Roche: A rush to vote by mail could lead to a constitutional crisis

As tens of millions of US voters are using VBM this year it is interesting to drill down into the pros and cons of the issue writes Dick Roche

A person walks near a sign listing coronavirus precautions at the King County election headquarters in Renton, Washington. File picture: Ted S Warren

When the governor of California, Gavin Newsome, a Democrat, announced his intention to send postal votes for the upcoming US presidential election to all registered voters, president Donald Trump took to Twitter protesting that: “there is NO WAY (ZERO) that mail-in Ballots are anything less than substantially fraudulent”.

Twitter tagged the tweet. The long-running US debate on vote-by-mail (VBM) elections became a brawl where participants listen only to views that bolster those they already hold and where ‘inconvenient truths’ are dismissed.