Mail-in voting is at the center of a national political debate, with the President pushing for the U.S. Postal Service to track ballots and potentially reject those linked to voters not listed in a federal database. With Election Day just two weeks away, 2 On Your Side talked with Western New York election experts about mail-in voting in New York State.<\/p>\n
An executive order from March would have restricted mail-in voting. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to do that.<\/p>\n
RELATED: 2026 Election Day Voter Guide<\/a><\/p>\n Jacob Neiheisel is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo. He says partisan bias when it comes to mail-in ballots is relatively new.<\/p>\n “This is something that we’ve seen a stunning turnaround on. It used to be that there was basically no partisan bias in who was using mail-in balloting, who was going to the polls early where that was available, versus those who went to the polls on Election Day,” said Jacob Neiheisel, UB Associate Professor, Political Science.<\/p>\n According to the Brookings Institution, a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank, fraud cases involving mail-in ballots are extremely rare<\/a> with about four cases for every ten-million mail-in ballots in U.S. general elections from 2016 to 2022.<\/p>\n “It’s not just mail-in ballots that have a very low fraud rate. It’s just voter impersonation fraud in general is not something that happens with great frequency. It happens. There are cases of it, but again, as you mentioned, it is vanishingly rare,” said Neiheisel.<\/p>\n Oregon has had universal vote-by-mail elections for more than two decades, but no-excuse mail-in voting is still relatively new in New York. Neiheisel says it can be beneficial to people who can’t easily go out and vote on Election Day.<\/p>\n “Yes, it is absolutely something that can enhance accessibility to the polls. It’s not a huge effect among those who study these kinds of things, but at the margins, it is something that can increase turnout by a little bit,” Neiheisel said.<\/p>\n