I don’t think your question is serious, right? Were we in a pandemic that statistically shifted the voter habits of a large amount of Americans from in person, physically gated process to a highly leveragable, mail in ballot process in those years?
As for 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 (there is much power outside of a presidential election) — the bus example is the current status quo and has been used for ages and accepted as the norm — that’s been the “worst/best (whatever your virtue signal tells you) way to influence an election.
If you’d like to have an honest discussion about it - I’d love to, I’m very seriously in the camp that votes are votes and every single one should be counted no matter how they arrived to the polls.
It isn't. Mail in ballots have been the status quo in many states for decades.
The most common problem with mail in ballots has been rejection from unverified signatures, which in some cases is arguably an instance of voter suppression.
> Mail in ballots have been the status quo in many states for decades.
Let’s focus on the battle ground states - not all states - and let’s specifically look at PA for a moment. Because of the electoral college, the statement that nationwide and some states we have used mail in ballots before is irrelevant.
So in 2018 PA had 200k absentee ballots - the mail-in ballot process [0].
In 2016 PA, and specifically Philly, had fewer absentee ballots requested than 2008 or 2012 [1] with around 18k for that metro.
In 2020, 2.6 million mail in ballots were requested 3 weeks before the election [2].
So you tell me, what really looks like the status quo? 2.6m ballots or around 200k. Physics would call this an order or magnitude difference, no? That would directly contradict that mail in ballots for PA are a status quo... and if you looked at the rest of the battle ground states, you will find similar evidence that mail in was never the preferred or dominate form of voting in the metros and battle ground counties.
My point is that the mail in ballot process itself is proven as not "leverageable", as you insinuated it to be.
The fact that the status quo changed was expected. It was predicted during the very first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Your insinuation is that because Pennsylvania is experiencing a surge of mail in ballots that its mail in ballot process is somehow vulnerable to be heavily abused, even though it is essentially a verbatim copy of what other states have been using - without abuse - for decades.
As for 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 (there is much power outside of a presidential election) — the bus example is the current status quo and has been used for ages and accepted as the norm — that’s been the “worst/best (whatever your virtue signal tells you) way to influence an election.
If you’d like to have an honest discussion about it - I’d love to, I’m very seriously in the camp that votes are votes and every single one should be counted no matter how they arrived to the polls.