What's in your mailbox? According to this report by Breitbart, over the last eight years, a mail-in voting ballot might not have been in there.
Federal data accumulated by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and the Election Administration and Voting Surveys the last four election have seen nearly 30 million mail-in ballots go missing. Now, the report isn't saying they grew legs and went for a walk never to return. But, in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018, 28.4 million mail-in ballots weren't delivered to the people they were meant to reach.
Breitbart reported:
In 2012, for instance, more than 33 million mail-in ballots were sent to registered voters. Of those, nearly four million went missing, more than 425,000 were undeliverable, and almost 260,000 were rejected.
For the 2014 election cycle, the number of mail-in ballots that went missing spiked to more than eight million. In that election, 29.2 million mail-in ballots were sent to registered voters. More than 610,000 of those mail-in ballots were undeliverable, and about 269,000 were rejected. Another 8.2 million of those mail-in ballots went missing.
A separate Breitbart report from April 10th showed that between the 2016 and 2018 elections, 16.4 million mail-in ballots went missing.
According to that report:
In the 2018 election, about 42.4 million ballots were mailed to registered voters. Of those mailed, more than one million were undeliverable, more than 430,000 were rejected, and nearly 10.5 million went missing.
The 2016 election showed similar discrepancies. That year, about 41.6 million ballots were mailed to registered voters. Of those mailed, more than 568,000 were undeliverable, nearly 320,000 were rejected, and close to six million went missing.
Talk of mail-in ballots has gained steam while the COVID-19 pandemic continues, with Democrats calling for "funding in coronavirus legislation to expand mail-in voting nationwide," according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal also reported that, according to a joint poll they conducted in conjunction with NBC News, 67 percent of voters support mail-in ballots for the upcoming elections in November.
However, President Donald Trump has criticized mail-in voting, tweeting two weeks ago that it has "tremendous potential for voter fraud."