Fox News report on our research: Strict mail-in voting rules maintained by foreign nations, new report finds

Aug 4, 2020 | Media Coverage

Fox News has a news story on our new research.

A new report highlights the restrictive laws most European countries and other developed areas throughout the world have in regards to mail-in voting, contrasting highly permissive U.S. regulations, as the debate over the security of the practice ramps up ahead of the presidential election.

The report, commissioned by the conservative Crime Prevention Research Center and released Monday, examines voting laws in countries in the European Union (EU), non-EU states in Europe and members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — an international body consisting largely of developed and free countries throughout Europe, North America, Asia and South America.

The report’s analysis of these countries’ voting laws, specifically on how restrictive their rules are on mail-in ballots, leads the study to conclude that the permissiveness of American laws toward widespread mail-in voting is rather unique in the developed world. It comes as most states in the U.S. have made some changes to loosen their absentee ballot rules, but Republicans in many cases are fighting back in the courts, arguing that such changes open up elections to potential fraud.

“If concern about vote fraud with mail-in ballots is delusional, it is a delusion shared by most of the world,” John Lott, the report’s author, writes.

Among OECD countries besides the United States, the report states that 78% of the countries either do not allow mail-in ballots “for people living in the country” or require a photo ID to get a mail-in ballot. In the EU, 85% of countries either bar mail-in ballots for people not living abroad or require a photo ID for such a ballot, according to the report. And every European country that is not a member of the EU has mail-in policies that fall into that category.

The report cites a number of cases of mail-in fraud that have happened in other countries that it says motivated these changes.

France, a country that does not allow mail-voting except for citizens living abroad, banned general mail voting in 1975 after a spate of fraud, the report says. The U.K., which has somewhat more permissive rules, saw six Labour Party members of the Birmingham City Council found guilty of vote fraud in 2005, according to The Telegraph. . . .

Tyler Olson, “Strict mail-in voting rules maintained by foreign nations, new report finds,” Fox News, August 4, 2020.

Also appeared in some local Fox affiliates and on MSN News.

Fox Wilmington, NC, August 4, 2020; Fox WFVX (Bangor, Maine), August 4, 2020; MSN News, August 4, 2020.

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