Mail-in voting is safe, secure, accessible and accurate

A Juneau resident exits the Mendenhall Valley Public Library after voting on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Independent)

By Patricia Turner Custard

A recent column by Angela Rodell on mail-in voting caught the attention of the League of Women Voters (LWV). For 106 years the LWV has worked to expand voting rights for all in the aftermath of the previous decades of fighting for women’s right to vote. 

The idea that half of the population was disenfranchised sounds ridiculous now, but the access to the ballot, voting rights, and who can vote has always been a battle and continues to be to this day. 

The LWV wholeheartedly supports mail-in voting as a vital part of voter access. Mail-in voting is not just a “convenience,” but is a part of a healthy democracy. It has served a number of states for decades with good results and has proven itself to be a safe, secure, and accurate voting method. 

In Juneau, our printed ballots are mailed directly to our households from Seattle, each with a barcode unique to each voter, thus ensuring that a voter cannot cast multiple ballots. Once a voter has filled out their ballot it is returned to the CBJ Ballot Processing Center through a number of ways (statistics from the most recent election):

72% through deposit in a dropbox, 

13% are mailed through USPS, 

14% are from people who voted in person, and

1% are from people who voted by e-ballot. 

Mail-in voting does depend on the United States Postal Service(USPS). To suggest that the USPS cannot be trusted to deliver the mail when it comes to mail-in ballots flies in the face of reality. Credit card companies, financial and insurance organizations, pharmacies, to name just a few, all trust the USPS to deliver bills, financial statements, and medicine in a timely and precise manner. The USPS also reliably delivers our wedding invitations, graduation and baby announcements, checks, personal letters, and political and commercial flyers as well as parcels from Amazon and other companies. Clearly the USPS can be trusted to deliver ballots to households — and those same filled-in ballots to the Ballot Processing Center. 

By making voting more accessible, mail-in voting is a way to ensure that every registered voter has the opportunity to be represented. The LWV mission to empower voters and defend democracy is furthered when everyone is represented in our democracy. Mail-in voting is safe, secure, accessible and accurate. 

Be a Voter!

• Patricia Turner Custard is the Juneau board president of the League of Women Voters.