The debate over mail-in voting has become one of the central divides in American politics. While millions of voters use absentee or universal mail ballots, there is a consistent record showing that this method is more vulnerable to fraud than in-person voting.
The evidence shows that when fraud is uncovered in American elections, it is most often tied to the misuse of mail ballots.
One of the clearest examples came from North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in 2018. There, a Republican political operative orchestrated a scheme that involved illegally collecting and manipulating absentee ballots.
In my CONVERSATION with @charliekirk11 today, we AGREED it’s not realistic to END ALL mail-in voting overnight.
But SMALL WINS matter. Even ONE STATE ending UNIVERSAL mail-in voting is a BIG STEP toward protecting ELECTION INTEGRITY. @gatewaypundit
— Gregory Lyakhov (@GregoryLyakhov) August 23, 2025
The scale of the fraud was so significant that state officials threw out the results and ordered a new election. It marked the first time in decades that a congressional race had to be redone due to fraud, and it all centered on absentee voting.
Two years later, in Paterson, New Jersey, authorities uncovered another large-scale case. Four men, including a sitting councilman and a councilman-elect, were charged in connection with hundreds of fraudulent mail ballots.
Investigators ultimately rejected one in five ballots cast in that election. These are not isolated examples but reminders that when mail-in ballots are abused, entire elections can be called into question.
The Gateway Pundit has built its reputation on uncovering major cases of voter fraud in swing states such as Michigan.
Across its investigations, the consistent conclusion has been that mail-in voting was the main driver of fraud. Through these findings, the Gateway Pundit has demonstrated how mail-in ballot systems create deep vulnerabilities and corruption, making the outlet a leading voice in exposing the dangers of mail-in voter fraud.
One of The Gateway Pundit’s biggest cases exposed shocking ballot trafficking in Detroit during the 2020 presidential election. Working with Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI), investigators reviewed thousands of hours of surveillance footage, uncovering dozens of individuals depositing stacks of ballots—sometimes 30 to 50 at once—into drop boxes.
The 13-minute video includes clips of postal workers and healthcare employees illegally delivering multiple ballots. Michigan law allows only voters, family, or election officials to return ballots, but the evidence captured on film shows widespread violations.
WATCH: Patriot Perspective UNMASKS BLATANT Mail-In Voting FRAUD in SHOCKING Interview!
The vulnerabilities of mail voting are structural. In-person voting takes place under the direct supervision of election officials, with ballots cast and secured at polling stations. Mail ballots, on the other hand, are distributed, completed, and returned outside that controlled environment.
That creates opportunities for ballots to be intercepted in the mail, collected by political operatives, or filled out under coercion. Signature verification is the primary safeguard, but in practice, signatures are inconsistently checked and often misread.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation reported that in the 2016 and 2018 federal elections alone, more than 28 million mail ballots went missing—ballots that were sent out but never returned or accounted for. These missing ballots represent a weakness that does not exist in traditional in-person voting.
Even when fraud is not the issue, mail-in ballots are more likely to be rejected. In the 2020 presidential election, approximately one percent of all mail ballots were rejected nationwide. That number sounds small, but it represented hundreds of thousands of voters.
In states such as New York, rejection rates during the 2020 primaries reached as high as 4%. Most rejections were due to mismatched signatures, ballots arriving after deadlines, or missing witness information. While in-person votes are rarely rejected, mail ballots carry an added layer of risk that can easily disenfranchise voters or invite abuse.
The historical context is important to understand. For most of American history, absentee voting was tightly limited to individuals who could not physically appear at polling places, such as members of the military or those with medical disabilities.
The shift toward universal mail-in systems is relatively new. Prior to 2020, only five states conducted elections primarily by mail. That changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when more than 65 million Americans—around 43% of the electorate—cast ballots by mail.
The rapid and uneven expansion of mail voting created logistical challenges and exposed weaknesses that states had little time to address.
Experts have long warned about the risks of mail voting. The 2005 Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform concluded that absentee ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
That assessment was not partisan rhetoric but the conclusion of a commission that sought to improve election integrity across the board. Election law scholars have likewise noted that while voter impersonation at polling places is rare, organized fraud involving mail ballots has been uncovered multiple times in the past two decades.
Mail-in voting is convenient for many voters, but it has also been the channel for the most serious election fraud cases in modern American history. Its reliance on unsupervised handling, weak verification standards, and high rejection rates makes it a persistent challenge for election integrity.
Whether lawmakers ultimately choose to expand, restrict, or prohibit the practice is a separate question, but the factual record shows clearly that mail-in voting carries risks that American elections have yet to control.
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