We live in an age where we can do all of our banking online, pay our taxes and receive tax rebates online, get a degree online, access the stock market online, shop online, and even order the state IDs often needed for voting online. Yet for some reason, people are insisting that voters must be physically present at a polling site in order to vote ... during an epidemic. It makes me wonder if they are actually concerned about voter fraud or if they are actively trying to supress people from voting. They claim the former, but as we've already seen recently in Kentucky and Georgia, the latter is actually a larger issue.
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of mail-in ballots. I believe that our technology is significantly advanced that we can give more voters the opportunity to vote in a safe and secure manner--if we really cared about this aspect of our democracy. Still, considering the situation, mail-in ballots are at least better than the system that we are currently using (especially in heavily populated areas).
I've written before that I believe election day should be a national holiday. Honestly, election day is a better representative of what America stands for than even the Fourth of July. Unfortunately, many Americans are working jobs that do not follow the traditional schedule. Lower socioeconomic families are often putting in time at multiple jobs which, between work and dealing with their families, makes in-person voting disproportionately difficult compared to more prosperous individuals. Voting in person is a challenge for the disabled, the sick, and the elderly as well.
This leads us to the current problem: voting in an epidemic. Especially considering that other options are available, forcing people to choose between their health and their vote is a particularly barbaric practice. I'm going to answer four of the justifications that people have used to excuse this kind of voter suppression head on.
"You go to the store, don't you? If you're willing to risk your life for that, asking you to go vote isn't asking too much" Actually, many people don't. A lot of shopping is done through online options or by other, healthier, people that they know. Also, there is a world of difference between spending half an hour to an hour buying food and standing for ninety minutes in crowded lines waiting to vote (I'm referring in particular some polling places at the recent Kentucky primary election). Interestingly, I see this question posted by a lot of people who also post about how they will refuse to wear a mask for the protection of others--it feels like they might really just hate other people.
Speaking of spewing hatred, there's this one: "Millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries ..." [caps removed] (Or other sorts of suggestions of fraud). Again, see my earlier suggestion to use even better technology, still there are safeguards to this sort of thing. Don't you think that foreign countries send in millions of false tax returns, hoping to defraud our country? We already have safeguards for this sort of thing in place (ironically, more safeguards than we have for foreign intrusion of our polling stations). In fact, over a fifth of all voting is already done by mail anyway due to our military and people using mail-in options--you know, like our President and Vice-President did in the last election. Mail-in votes require just as much authentication as absentee ballots.
Speaking of which: "Why don't people just get absentee ballots?" Many will, or are having others do so for them, but unless operations are stepped up, there might not be enough. Also, this is back to the entire bit about forcing people to risk lives to vote argument. You might be young and hale and not have a concern about it, but COVID is particularly decimating (literally) to the elderly population. Fighting against mail-in voting is a game of Russian roulette (intentional reference) that some people will risk their lives for ... but they shouldn't have to.
Finally: "It will delay election results." This is a legitimate concern, but as we built in a couple of months in our system before power actually changes hands, this might actually make it so we can go to sleep on election night and just wait a couple of days to see the results. Also, I will again note that we have better technology that can handle this.
One other thing that you should consider: while there are exceptions, many of the polling workers are in the higher-risk groups when it comes to COVID. Insisting on in-person voting not only puts them at risk, but also decreases the number of people we have that are willing to be at that risk (which is one of the reason Kentucky had to condense the number of polling stations--this led to 600,000 voters having only one polling location available to them).
We are seeing a rise in COVID cases nationwide in the middle of summer! Imagine what that will look like when we get into the tradition cold/flu season around the time of our national election. Not preparing now (let alone doing what we should be doing in the first place) for what will likely be an already difficult time is short-sighted and irresponsible.