Should Mail-In ballots be banned in the 2020 US Elections?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should Mail-In ballots be banned in the 2020 US Elections?
Position‹2 of 2: No, mail-in ballots should not be banned in the 2020 US Presidential elections.
Argument‹6 of 6: Mail-in voting is safe from voter fraud

All the evidence suggests mail-in voter fraud is statistically non-existent. The scale at which fraud by mail-in-voting would need to occur to have any impact on the election is impossible to achieve.

The argument

Proponents of mail voting point out that there is no basis to suggest that mail-in voting is not safe from voter fraud. In fact, while the prevalence of mail-in voting will increase in the 2020 election due to COVID-19, mail-in voting has been a long-standing practice within the U.S for decades. And for the decades that this practice has occurred, it has proven to be very secure with only extremely rare cases of attempted fraud at a rate of 0.000006%. There is and always has been a system put in place to prevent voter fraud from domestic voters and foreign threats. These anti-fraud protections include requiring people who request ballots to be registered voters, mailing ballots to the official address listed on voter registration rolls and having election authorities thoroughly review mail-in ballots to verify names, addresses, and signatures. Mail-in voting is safe from voter fraud committed by foreign powers. There is no way for foreign governments to produce and replicate mail-in ballots with any or all of the components that election officials will be checking and verifying on election day. Mail-in voting may be safer from voter fraud than in-person voting because people who vote in person don’t always update their address when they move and may be voting at the wrong polling place, whereas mail-in elections constantly update voter addresses to ensure they receive the right ballot. There is no basis for the argument and no evidence that mail-in voting leads to voter fraud.

Premises

[P1]Mail-in voting has been used securely in the US for decades, with attempted fraud at a vanishingly rare rate of 0.000006%, and layered protections verify registration, addresses, and signatures. [P2] Foreign powers cannot replicate ballots with the components officials check, and mail voting can be safer than in-person voting because it constantly updates voter addresses. [C] Therefore, because mail-in voting is safe from voter fraud, mail-in ballots should not be banned in the 2020 US elections.

Counter-arguments

Those that say that mail-in voting is not safe from voter fraud bring up the argument that mailboxes can be robbed and broken into. They say that voters may try to commit fraud by voting in person after they have already submitted a mail-in ballot. They say that although difficult, foreign countries will still try to print counterfeit ballots and forge signatures unto ballots. These are all arguments that Donald Trump and other prominent Republican politicians have made in the case against mail- in ballots.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The rate is given with no source, numerator or denominator, and "attempted fraud" counts detections — a measure of what the safeguards caught rather than of what occurred. Long use also shows the method is established rather than secure, and the premise runs the two together. [Rejecting P2] That there is "no way" to replicate ballots is a strong claim asserted without support, and the counter's concerns are largely domestic — interception, or voting twice — which foreign capability does not address. The comparison with in-person voting also changes the subject, since an advantage on address accuracy does not establish that either method is safe.