Ah, so it's the alleged loss of secrecy you're against (unless a good case can be made for this new system). Here's a description of how mail-in voting works, from Brookings:
"In making their request, voters have to provide their name and address. After receipt of the request, local election authorities send a ballot to the voter at the home address and provide one security envelope for the ballot that keeps the vote choice private and another envelope into which the sealed ballot is placed. The voter signs the outside of the second envelope to certify he or she is a registered voter.
"Upon receipt of the mailed ballot, local election authorities check the name of the voter to make sure the person is registered to vote and is casting a ballot from the address registered with the election authority. After certifying those facts, they remove the sealed ballot from the outside envelope containing the voter signature so that the voter’s preferences remain confidential. On Election Day, states count the mail ballots and add the results to the votes of those individuals who cast their ballots in person."
Now you're saying it's conservative to reject what's new unless a good case can be made for the change. But if the standard of what counts as a good case amounts to a paranoid need for absolute certainty (as sanctified by religious tradition or by libertarian solipsism), then _that's_ the essence of conservatism, not the prudence but the paranoia.
According to Brookings, procedures have been put in place to keep the mail-in voting private. If you want more than that based on paranoid fears of harassers showing up on your doorstep, your argument can be parodied as a matter of logic (rather than out of an arbitrary imposition on the meaning of "conservatism").
By the way, if your definition of "conservative" is idiosyncratic, I don't see how you have any special ownership over the term's meaning. You're the one who has literally said your idiosyncratic conception should override the standard conceptions I'm working with in this series. If anyone's imposing here, it seems to be you.
Notice also how this Republican stance on voter fraud is quite consistent with my thesis. The real fear, of course, is certain white Americans' fear of losing their grip on the country by improving American democracy. The fear is that if voting is made easier and thus fairer in poorer neighbourhoods, Democrats would end up getting more votes than Republicans. That's also the reason for Republican gerrymandering. So the fear is of a shakeup in the dominance hierarchy, a rise of the peasant class.
Again, if you assume the worst of conservatives (social Darwinism or anti-humanism), you can predict their policies.
