In response to the deleted comment: It's difficult for me to put the case for those people who think the current wording allows things like faxes but prohibts other electronic forms. I think what it boils down to is that they want to stick with only those forms with which they are personally comfortable, and what to exclude anything else. Nobody would say that out loud, of course, so one has to find a different way of putting it that sounds more defensible. There's also a strong element of, "Anything allowed in the past, even if it might have been technically wrong, has to be permitted because precedent is more important than anything else." So while technically a fax might not be "mail," the fact that administrators have accepted faxed ballots and no action was taken means that they're incorporated into the definition of mail, whereas anything that hasn't been done in the past is automatically suspicious.

And they say that I generate convoluted reasoning!