Yes I read the article. There's nothing pragmatic about it. There are no major flaws in the mail voting system, at least not in CA. Registration takes only a few minutes and then they mail you a ballot every election. If voters can't be bothered to do that then it seems unlikely they would actually show up and wait in line at a polling place.

If companies want to give employees an extra holiday then sure, go ahead. But that won't increase voter participation.

> There are no major flaws in the mail voting system

In general terms postal voting, and any method for voter-not-present polling, is open to coercion and intimidation.

That's why voting-in-person in booths remains the primary method, even in countries such as the UK where voting papers are logged against the identity of the voter ( it takes a court order to de-seal that information ).

It's definitely open to coercion and intimidation, so in some respects I'd consider that a "major" flaw. But is it a widespread enough problem to rule out the paper ballot? Is there a systemic problem of spouses voting for differently-minded spouses, or employers requiring their employees to turn in their blank ballots, or things like that?

The rate of voting fraud for in-person voting in the US seems to be around 1 per 10 million votes cast or so. The rate for voting fraud for vote-by-mail seems to be around 1 per 100,000 or so.

In terms of invalidated votes, in-person seems to have about 1% of ballot rejections, whereas vote-by-mail has about 2% rejections. (No data on how many of those rejections were inappropriate and how many were appropriate that I could find). Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-b...

I don't see how this is relevant to the context of the conversation: the perspective of the individual nonvoter being incentivized to vote.

I just did a command-f on the article, and it doesn't mention mail at all, so it probably doesn't do a CBA against promotion of mail-in.

In any case, I really don't see why this is such an important cause to prioritize:

1) Are there really good policies that are being held up by the voters that don't vote because of the inconvenience?

2) How does that compare with other uses of political capital (alternatives to FPTP, transit, anti-NIMBY policies, tax shifts, etc)?

3) What is the impact of low turnout vs electoral shenanigans in miscounting? Why not focus on having a more auditable system?

This article starts from the premise of "the most important thing to do is increase turnout, regardless of the costs [like those associated with a new holiday], and regardless of whether that improves policy". Sorry, I don't share that premise, and neither should anyone else.