The New York Times Magazine - USA (2020-11-15)

America’s history of voting by
mail is a war story. As far back as
the American Revolution, soldiers sta-
tioned away from home wrote letters
demanding that their votes be counted
in local elections. (In isolated cases, they

were.) During the Civil War, most states

passed provisions allowing soldiers to

vote absentee. Some 150,000 soldiers

cast their ballots from battlefi elds and

hospitals, voting overwhelmingly to

re- elect Abraham Lincoln in 1864. But

if mail-in voting is far from a newfan-

gled approach to democracy, not even

during world wars has the country seen

anything like the more than 90 million

mail-in ballots that were requested for

this year’s general election.

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