Alexa Kivett, Austin Buholtz and Carson Leigh Olson: Guest columnists Like many other things in society today, voting via mail-in ballot has become stigmatized by some groups of people. While the Democratic Party framed this voting method as a safer alternative to in-person voting during a pandemic, former president Donald Trump continued to discredit it by erroneously claiming that vote-by-mail ballots were being purposefully manipulated. Absentee voting and vote-by-mail voting methods have been used sporadically in the U.S. since at least the colonial era and were originally created as a way for soldiers and settlers to vote in elections. The first widespread use of absentee voting came during the Civil War when Union soldiers voted in the reelection campaign of Abraham Lincoln against George McClellan.