I am writing this as a sort of plea that voters who want the best chance of ridding our country of Donald Trump this November resist the urge and even the entreaties by our allies to vote by mail. I completely understand the appeal of vote by mail, and in any other election I would follow along and do so myself. It provides a paper trail if nothing else. But not in this election. No way.
As we have been reading for some time now, in 2020 we will not be looking forward to an election night, but rather to an election week or even election month as vote by mail and provisional ballots ballots are counted and compiled, with Trump the perceived "winner" on election night because the vast majority of the GOP votes in person, while a substantial majority of us will cast mail-in ballots that cannot even begin to be validated in some states until the polls close on November 3. And as that vote counting process draws out, and as Trump and his enablers prematurely claim to have "won", a cloud of uncertainty and perceived illegitimacy will gather over even the most ultimately convincing Biden victory. It will no doubt be argued in the comments that there are plenty of guardrails that will protect a legitimate victory no matter what Trump and his enablers might do, and that the candidate with the most votes and the most votes in the electoral college will be inaugurated next January. Again, that might be true of a normal election but this is no normal election. Trump and his clan will do anything, anything at all, to stay in power, and it will begin with a claim that the final vote count was somehow illegitimate.
We must not give them that opportunity. We must defeat Trump in a popular vote tidal wave on election night, an utterly convincing trouncing via in-person voting, regardless of the risk to us as individuals.
It's 1941, folks, and as Blutarski so famously said, the Germans have just bombed Pearl Harbor. Now we have to do our part, and, at the risk of horribly mixed historical metaphors, if that feels like riding with the Light Brigade "into the breach," then that's where we'll have to go.
Commit to voting come hell or high water first, but then commit to voting in person and to assisting as many other citizens to do likewise.
Vote in person, not by mail, whatever the risk. Our democracy is worth it, and will thank you.