I really love the convenience of the mail-in ballot. I love not having to stand in line at a polling station, which is great when my schedule is swamped with work and school. But while the system is undoubtedly convenient, it has a major flaw that makes me advocate its abolishment. It’s much easier to sell votes with mail-in ballots.

Let’s say there are two die-hard political activists, one for candidate A and one for candidate B. One evening, the die-hards are, as politely as possible, playing a poker game together at your house and you’re losing. Suddenly, in a flash of genius, you remember your nearly junk-mail ballot. With a wry smile on your face, you offer to sell it to the highest bidder. Eventually, candidate A’s political activist wins with a $500 check and an offer to sell you a car from the dealership he works at with no commission.

That is until political activist B tells you and activist A both that he’s been told by the mafia that the bosses prefer candidate B, and if he himself didn’t show up to their headquarters with your signed — but otherwise unmarked — ballot, bad things were going to happen to both of you. The perspiration and nervousness that had so recently abated return afresh as you stare into your “friend’s” cold and unyielding eyes.

This is an extreme example for sure, and all three poker players are clearly less than angels morally, but still, this is possible. Individuals can be threatened into voting a certain way and bribed into voting a certain way, more easily with mail-in ballots than at polling stations. The secrecy of the ballot, the greatest protection for the individual voter, is vastly reduced, which opens up all kinds of opportunities for outside coercion from interest groups. At a polling station, no one can see your ballot. At home though, when the unopened envelope is sitting next to a pile of magazine offers, it’s up to you to protect your ballot’s secrecy.

Not to mention the fact that the use of mail-in ballots also makes it much easier for Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants and Osama bin Laden to vote. If they had to walk up to a polling station and show ID to get a ballot, they would most definitely be refused. But with a mail-in ballot, we have to rely on the ability of the ballot counters to accurately identify the correct address and person on each envelope before the ballot itself is lost to the pile. We may know, for instance, that Mickey Mouse voted, but since the identity of the voter is not discernible on the ballot itself, we have no way of figuring out who or what he voted for with certainty after the envelope has been opened and the ballot placed in the pile.

Now, the Mickey Mouse example is certainly more preventable than the poker one, but it still is not fully preventable, and we must trust the integrity of the counters to identify fake ballots. The poker example is nearly impossible to prevent and, at least when it comes to simply bribing a voter, could be viewed as not morally reprehensible by some.

The mail-in ballot is convenient and cuts costs in the sense that it is easier to provide than polling booths. But the mail-in ballot threatens the very integrity of the election and, by extension, the integrity of democracy itself by creating incentives to sell your vote to the highest bidder. If we are unwilling to meet the costs necessary to maintain the integrity of our democracy, we soon will not have a democracy to maintain.

Reach columnist Thomas Cloud at opinion@dailyuw.com.