Star-Ledger: Vote-by-mail spurred controversy, fraud charges and maybe the Capitol riot. Now it may become federal law.

Congressional Democrats plan to use their new-found majorities to permanently expand vote-by mail after an election that saw both record turnout and former President Donald Trump’s failed attempts to block New Jersey and other states from making it easier in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The bill would let anyone could vote by mail for any reason and receive postage-paid envelopes for requesting and returning ballots. States would have to set up secure drop boxes for completed ballots. Any ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to 10 days later would count, and voters whose ballots are rejected would have to be notified and given time to fix problems such as mismatched signatures.

The bill also would create automatic voter registration and allow people to register on the same day they vote, require all states to provide 15 days for early voting, allow voters to sign affidavits in lieu of presenting photo IDs, and eliminate requirements that ballots be notarized or witnessed.

“We should have standardize rules and that’s what this bill is doing,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy at the advocacy group Common Cause. “This hopefully would tamp down on all of that chaotic litigation by getting these rules settled and setting a national standard. …

The bill leaves it to the states to decide whether to have all mail-in elections or, like New Jersey did last year, send ballots to all registered voters.

House Republicans in the last Congress objected to what they said was an attempt to “federalize our elections.”

Both Muller and Spaulding said the Republicans obviously have changed their tune since then. A majority of the GOP conference, including Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd Dist., first asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election results in battleground states Trump lost, and then voted to reject the certified results.

“It’s incredibly hypocritical for any of the Republicans to make that argument in the wake of well over 130 House Republicans voting to overturn an election hours after the Capitol was sacked by the insurrectionists,” Spaulding said.