Unsurprisingly, there is a new feud between the Democrats and Republicans. The newest feud between that has recently sprung up before the upcoming election on November 3rd is mail-in-voting. While the Democrats are pushing for universal mail-in-voting, Republicans are worried about the risks of a rigged election.

As we are amid a global pandemic, many Americans have been following the instructions of Dr. Fauci, a member of the coronavirus task force and the director of the NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases). For months, Dr. Fauci has been advising Americans to take extra precautions to stay healthy during this pandemic. Although Fauci has seemed to disagree with President Trump on a few matters regarding the virus, Fauci took the President’s side on the matter of mail-in-voting. During an interview with National Geographic, Fauci said, “There is no reason most Americans can’t vote in person this November” While many Democrats have been following Fauci’s advice closely, this was not the type of news they were hoping to hear from their coveted medical adviser.

According to the U.S. Election Assistance Committee, in the 2016 presidential election, Sixty-three percent of the U.S. civilian voting age population (140,114,502 million Americans) voted in the 2016 Presidential Election. More than 41 percent of all ballots were cast before Election Day. Nearly Twenty-three percent were cast using by-mail absentee voting.

Although most Republicans are mainly skeptical about mail-in-voting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) has already accused President Trump of a “campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters.” This controversial accusation by House Speaker Pelosi is extremely reminiscent of when the Democrats accused President Trump of colluding with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.

Although President Trump has voted by mail himself multiple times, he does not agree with the widespread expansion of the practice. President Trump believes that all voters who vote by an absentee ballot, should have a valid reason. As well as the concern of widespread mail-in-voting, Republicans are worried about how the ballots will be returned to be counted. The Democrats want “community ballot collection” which is essentially one person going and gathering hundreds of ballots to be counted, but the Republicans refer to it as “ballot harvesting”.

It is inevitable that if millions of people submit their ballots by mail last minute, the United States Postal Service will be overwhelmed with the amount of mail that the election results will be postponed. Democrats are blaming Donald Trump for this issue, saying that he is “defunding the USPS” but that couldn’t be more false. In July 2020, the Trump Administration gave the USPS a $10 billion loan.
It is evident that there is no way to circumvent mail-in-voting. The majority of right-wing politicians will oppose the widespread expansion of mail-in-voting, while the majority of the left will support the practice.