The Newest Democratic Fight to Make Vote by Mail Easier: REPUBLICANS WHO WANT TO ROLL BACK SINGLE: SIGN-UP REFORMS COULD PAY A PRICE FOR ONCE AGAIN STEPPING ON VOTING RIGHTS.

• Date: 01 November 2022
• Author: Thakker, Prem

In the lead-up to this year's primaries, Ohio state Representative Michael Skindell got a call from a voter with considerable clout--his mother. Like many in the state, she felt frustrated having to apply, year after year, to receive mail-in ballots--especially during this year's electoral chaos, when a tumultuous redistricting battle in the state led to primary elections in both May and August. Why, she asked, couldn't she just sign up once and be done with it--that is, become a permanent absentee voter?

The calls flooded in, not only from Skindell's mother, but from her neighbors, too--older voters who told him it was confusing to keep track of off-year elections to ensure that they applied for absentee ballots in time. Skindell's mother and her friends joked that with age, remembering to vote is hard enough, let alone during odd circumstances like this year's.

The concern is valid, whether one is "aged" or not. August's primary held the lowest voter turnout in a statewide primary since at least 1962, with less than 8 percent of voters turning out. Even though Ohio, like 26 other states, has a no-excuse absentee voting policy, the need to sign up for a mailed ballot every election likely contributed to the low turnout.

Responding to frustrations like these, Skindell decided to introduce legislation to create a permanent mailin ballot application list for the state. Giving voters the option of "single sign-up"--that is, automatically having their ballots mailed to them, rather than having to remember to apply before every election--would seem like a simple, noncontroversial reform. But in today's polarized political environment, it wasn't seen that way by Skindell's Republican colleagues, who have a supermajority in the Ohio legislature and are allowing Donald Trump's attacks on mail-in voting to dictate their agenda. To make any progress at all, Skindell chose to introduce a compromise bill that would allow voters to automatically get an application to apply for absentee voting, rather than just a ballot, as he would have preferred. Yet even that concession wasn't enough for the Ohio GOP, which has thus far been largely resistant to even considering the idea--pitting them against the will of the people, as a 2020 poll showed that 60 percent of Ohioans were in favor of creating a permanent vote-by-mail list.

Similar battles over single sign-up are taking place around the country, and are emblematic both of the larger vote-by-mail policy...