Mass Mail-In Voting Is Democrats’ New ‘Blue Wall’

The most striking feature of the contentious 2020 election was the sudden explosion of mass mail-in voting in states that had little experience with it, and the unprecedented levels of election interference that occurred as left-leaning nonprofit organizations such as The Center for Tech and Civic Life (which was behind “Zuckbucks”) and Democrat “lawfare” experts tried to make the best of this chaotic, mail-in ballot free-for-all.

The mail-in ballot election of 2020 created the template for the Democrats’ new “Blue Wall” election strategy, as a deluge of mail-in ballots propelled Joe Biden to victory, especially in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The rate of mail-in voting rose to above 50 percent in Michigan and Wisconsin, and almost 40 percent in Pennsylvania.

The old “Blue Wall” was an impregnable fortress of safely Democrat states because of large blocs of blue-collar voters — mainly in the Rust Belt of the upper Midwest — that could be relied upon to get Democrats an electoral college victory in a close election. The old “Blue Wall,” however, dramatically failed to protect Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, as an unexpectedly large number of formerly Democrat, working-class voters in Rust Belt states became Donald Trump voters.

Democrats have countered the defection of working-class voters by going all in on no-excuse mail-in voting, first as a temporary, emergency measure during the Covid-19 pandemic, and now as a natural and inevitable evolution of the election landscape, according to partisan media propaganda. States that adopted extremely liberal mail-in voting regimes during Covid are being counted on to function as a new “Blue Wall,” where it is hoped that mountains of mail-in ballots will provide Democrats with an insurmountable electoral advantage.

How the New ‘Blue Wall’ Works, and How It Changes the Election System

Even with a more credible candidate than Kamala Harris, it is doubtful that today’s Democrat Party could win an electoral college victory in a close election in the absence of the current, expanded mail-in voting regime in the swing states.

This is because mass mail-in voting increases the political power of the geographically concentrated urban and university voters who are key parts of the Democratic coalition. It also damages election integrity in ways that are only now beginning to be understood.

Heavily funded mass mail-in “ballot harvesting” and ballot canvassing at a scale that is likely to have a significant impact on election results will not be successful outside of densely populated areas where homogeneous, highly partisan voting blocs can be identified. Deep-blue urban areas and large universities, with their heavy concentrations of Democrat voters, are perfect settings for successful ballot harvesting and canvassing efforts based on mail-in voting.

Vast new powers flow to the process-oriented election activists, nonprofit organizations, and liberal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that propagandize for expanded mail-in voting, and plan and administer the mail-in ballot regimes behind the new “Blue Wall.”

The logistical difficulties and expense of a mass mail-in ballot mobilization in less densely populated areas with politically diverse populations would be prohibitive. This reduces the impact of conventional, in-person voters who live in rural and exurban areas.

This explains the inherent partisan advantage of mail-in voting for the Democrat coalition, but it doesn’t explain the damage that mass mail-in voting inflicts on the election system.

The problem is, when the emphasis in elections shifts from turning out conventional voters to chasing mail-in ballots, as it has for the Democrats in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, we have entered a qualitatively different electoral world than the one we inhabited before.

Elections won on the basis of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting tell us far more about the ingenuity and logistical efficiency of ballot harvesters, community organizers, and the election activists of the liberal nonprofit world than about voter enthusiasm, voter policy preferences, and whether voters are satisfied with the performance of their elected representatives.

 An electoral consensus reached through mail-in voting is certain to be a “manufactured” consensus, imposed on the election by the partisan media, and by the powerful nonprofits and NGOs that have financed and promoted the expansion of the current mail-in voting regime. This is in contrast to the role that free and fair elections have always played in providing a public affirmation of a specific candidate or governing agenda, and in checking abuses of government power.

What Will Happen Behind the New ‘Blue Wall’ in 2024

Corporate media has transformed Kamala Harris from a has-been, far-left presidential contender and generally awful vice president into an unbeatable presidential candidate, appearing to ride an unstoppable wave of organic popular support among a majority of voters.

It is all an illusion. This obviously manufactured enthusiasm for Harris as a presidential candidate is analogous to the manufactured wave of electoral support for a Harris-Walz ticket that will take shape behind the new “Blue Wall,” as Democratic mail-in votes will likely swell to at least 50 percent of total Democratic votes cast in the key swing states, if 2020 is any indication. 

For better or worse, this means that the success of a Harris-Walz ticket will be more reflective of the efficiency of the Democrats’ mail-in ballot mobilization machine, and the political fetishes of the inhabitants of the left’s nonprofit and NGO world, than of rational citizens engaged in public acts of self-governance.

Republicans should therefore take some comfort in the fact that a Harris-Walz victory, if it occurs, will not be the result of a widespread repudiation of a Trump-Vance ticket, or a Republican policy agenda, but rather will reflect the peculiar dynamic of mass, mail-in voting, and the way it enables the rabidly partisan outside influencers who manage mail-in ballots in deep-blue urban areas and college towns to have an outsized influence on election results.

As long as what were sold to us as temporary emergency voting measures associated with the pandemic are allowed to remain in place, Republicans will be working against an implacable force that far outweighs the mythical “margin of fraud” that Republicans always took as an electoral fact of life as a result of urban government corruption. 

Republicans who have thrown up their hands and adopted an “if you can’t beat them, join them” stance toward mass mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are likely to be dissuaded by the 2024 election results, which will be far more favorable to Democrats than they otherwise would be if voting norms returned to their pre-pandemic status.

The decadent accouterments of the pandemic, such as face masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates have disappeared just as rapidly as they originally burst on the scene, and with little resistance at this point.

The mass mail-in voting era deserves to be as short-lived as the draconian Covid-19 lockdown and vaccine mandate era, and Republicans should fight tooth and nail to dismantle the current mail-in voting regime.

William Doyle, Ph.D., is research director at The Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute in Irving, Texas. He specializes in economic history and the private funding of American elections. Previously, he was associate professor and chair in the department of economics at the University of Dallas. He can be contacted at [email protected].