An Oct. 6, 2012 New York Times photo caption reads: "An absentee ballot in Florida. Almost 2 percent of mailed ballots are rejected, double the rate for in-person voting."In 2012, before mail-in voting became a partisan political litmus test, the New York Times published an article titled “Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises.” The piece noted that “there is a bipartisan consensus that voting by mail … is more easily abused than other forms,” and that “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.” A bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James A. Baker III, concluded in 2005 that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud” and that “vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” Carter and Baker also pointed out that citizens who vote at nursing homes “are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation.” In Florida, there is even a name for this: “granny farming.”
