I see this come up a lot in discussions about voting in America. Postal votes disproportionately go to Democrats, hence the Democrats want to expand postal voting while Republicans want to restrict it (and insist there is totally a bunch of fraud going on).
I’ve googled with a few search engines and haven’t found a convincing reason. Lots of evidence that the skew is real, but no explanation as to why. Indeed, if one just looks at demographics, one would expect postal voting to benefit Republicans by facilitating votes from people in the countryside who live far away from voting centers.
So what actually gives?
Cities tend to be more democratic than their surrounding area, but also tend to be more densely populated. So you can have a situation like this with hours long lines in busy areas, which heavily disrupt people’s ability to have their vote registered.
So! The answer to that problem is mail-in voting! Vote in advance, with no lines, on your schedule! But the problem with city voting isn’t always an accident, and so mail-in voting has obviously got to go too.
But anyway, I think that’s your answer. It swings Democrat because other things have already happened to make voting in Democrat areas worse in other ways, and this seemed like a good alternative.
Yeah. It is important to note that mail-in voting is only like this in states executing various forms of voter suppression.
For western states that don’t have this tradition of voter suppression, the results tend to be more mixed. For instance, Colorado saw Republicans get a bump when switching to mail-in ballots as it was thought that mobility hindered elderly voters found it easier to vote from home than have to travel to vote.