Here in WA, we have been all mail in for some time (with a very limited number of in person locations for those that mail in does not work for due to whatever reason). It is simple, works well, and way better than the in person voting experiences I have had. The county office has a webpage where I can check to see if my vote has been received. In 2018, the suspected improper/fraudulent ballot rate was reported at 0.004 percent.
Mail in voting does not appear to have dramatically shifted the % of eligible voters casting a ballot and the overall % of the voting population that participates is still embarrassingly low at around 60%. This is not too far off of the national statistics.
State:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspxNational:
http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-presentQuite frankly, I am embarrassed by the state of elections in the US. We have been doing this for over 200 years and while a lot of places do run pretty smoothly, the long (and continuing) history of voter disenfranchisement through a bevy of tactics is sickening. That we, as a nation, have not pushed harder on rectifying this does not speak well of us. Most citizens are too caught up in their daily lives (I say this without blame) to get into the weeds of how voter roll purges, ID requirements, allocation of polling resources, gerrymandering, etc operate unless it directly disenfranchises them in a way that is apparent. I think that this is part of what is unique about the USPS actions over the last few weeks. It is transparent and adversely impacts an institution that Americans generally like.
Trump's strategy regarding mail in voting is simple, and the math behind it is well illustrated by the NY red district example above.
1. Get early good numbers from in person voting to generate a public narrative (as also happened for GWB in FL 2000).
2. Push to stop counting mail in ballots early.
3. Work to disallow as many mail in ballots as possible.
4. Send to SCOTUS to attempt to certify based on incomplete returns, following the 2000 playbook.
Given that demographics are wildly against the GOP, in order to survive at the federal level, they will have to either embrace diversity to make a bigger tent, or further double down on increasing the power of rural states, and working to bias cast ballots.