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Sure, but it was typically limited to legal residents living out-of-state/overseas and was something that had to be requested with a reason provided, thus guaranteeing at least some correlation between mailed ballots and active voters. Changing the rules at the last second to allow mass mailings as was done in Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, Et Al was perhaps justified in the context of ongoing Covid lockdowns but has no place today. The whole thing just reeks of Rham Emmanuel/Janet Reno-esque opportunism.
A slight majority of states allowed absentee ballots without any reason (thus "no-excuse"), it just had to be requested. Source here. More states are no-excuse or all-mail after the pandemic, but it wasn't exactly unusual before.
Since the pandemic, eight states now have all-mail voting (sending out mail ballots to everyone by default), but none are generally considered swing states at the moment. Obviously this could still impact state and by-district federal elections, but it probably won't shift electoral college votes much. The 2022 midterms had around 30% mail ballots compared to around 25% in 2018, so the durable shift in voting behavior is much less than the outlier that was 2020 at around half. Republican-led states such as Georgia passed legislation making voting more regimented and less accessible, and Georgia is actually becoming a swing state. The charge of opportunism can be leveled at nearly everyone.
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Just to reiterate the PA changes were made in 2019 PRIOR to Covid by Republicans. They believed it would help turn out in rural areas where polling locations might require a lot of travel.
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