Here is my personal opinion on mail in voting for the 2020 general election in November.
The U.S. should not do large-scale mail in voting for the 2020 election. There is simply no time left before November to set up system for mailing the ballots, receiving/sorting returned ballots, validating the ballots, and counting the ballots (which may require new scanning systems in many states).
Absentee voting should continue as it always had in every state. Individuals deeply concerned about in-person voting can use an absentee ballot -- but states should not be sending out ballot requests to every resident in a state.
I can support mail-in voting in the future once a system has been properly set-up well in advance to use a mail-in ballot system in a wholesale manner in a state. This will require quite a bit of preparation work.
Even better would be an online voting system where you registration code is mailed to you and you can vote-on line after completing the registration process with personal information (SSN - proving you are a U.S. citizen, driver license number, address, last year's earnings associated with the SSN, etc - are examples of what can be used to validate a voter in the online registration process). If we can use online systems for the U.S. Census, or for looking up your SSN earnings then we can use if for voting. This on-line voting, of course, will take time to set-up properly and have tracking mechanisms in place to prevent fraud.
In the meantime the 2020 general election will need to be in-person despite COVID. Absentee ballots can be used; however most people will need to vote in-person due to the limited time left before the election.
I will also note --- many nursing homes already have their residents vote via absentee voting -- so the 2020 in-person voting will have minimum impact on these high-risk communities.
