Voting by Mail: Ending Long Lines & Hanging Chads

[cal04]

In a Nation article right after the 2004 election, scholar James Galbraith denounced the long lines in Ohio that prevented so many people from voting. "It is an injustice, an outrage and a scandal--a crime, really--that American citizens should have to wait for hours in the November rain in order to exercise the simple right to vote."

Those rainy Ohio lines in 2004 joined the hanging chads of 2000 as symbols of dysfunction in our voting process. The results of both have been explosive political battles across the country over which voting machines and procedures will protect people's right to vote, yet work efficiently as tens of millions of people converge on understaffed polling stations on election day. But there is an alternative: voting by mail – which has delivered higher voter turnout with less expense than traditional polling booths in states and local jurisdictions that have used it in recent years.

The Oregon Experience

After a series of experiments in using vote by mail for some special elections and primary elections, Oregon voted overwhelmingly in a ballot referendum in 1998 that all future primary and general elections would be held by mail. With multiple elections since then, the new system has been extremely popular. A 2003 poll conducted by the University of Oregon found that 81 percent of Oregonians prefer vote-by-mail to polling place elections

Based on the state's experience, Oregon's Secretary of State Bill Bradbury has become a national cheerleader for voting by mail, arguing in a 2005 Washington Post op-ed that:
Vote-by-mail is voter-friendly, and high turnout in every vote-by-mail election shows that voters like the convenience...The answer to the nation's voting anxiety is not a national standard that imposes new rules on an outdated system of polling places. The answer is a low-tech, low-cost, reliable and convenient system that makes it easier to vote and easier to count votes. The answer is vote-by-mail.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/30064

Secretary of State Bill Bradbury
"Vote by Mail: the Real Winner is Democracy"
Guest Opinion by Bill Bradbury: The Washington Post Printed on January 1, 2005
http://www.sos.state.or.us/executive/speeches/010105.htm

[uppityperson]

1. Have to ask, how is fraud prevented?

I vote by mail in WA, but hand deliver my vote to county office. What is to prevent fraud if you mail it in? Is there a way to check and make sure it got there and in time before the election/due date?

[Cleita]

4. It's more to make sure that everyone get's a chance to vote.

Other than that, I supposed there are risks no matter how you vote.

[uppityperson]

5. I understand why, and I vote by mail also. Just wondering the risks.

I hand deliver my mail-in ballot to make sure it gets there, just wondering about how to tell if your vote got in. Mail voting makes a lot of sense, if fraud can be prevented.

[TechBear_Seattle]

9. If you vote from King County, then you know...

There's no guarantee that you will even get a ballot. Why is eliminating more than a century of voter protections and oversight a good thing again?

[benddem]

2. it should be national

the care that is taken to make sure the votes are legal and counted is in contrast to the idiocy in FL, OH, NM.

[Cleita]

3. I think this should be part of voting reform along with

government financed campaigns, run-off voting and scrapping of the electronic voting machines.

[ellenfl]

6. the pic in that nation article showed a mailbox

designated as a voting box and it was padlocked. don't know if there are special boxes.

ellen fl

[hedda_foil]

7. Oregon has the most ethical SoS in the country.

This would be uttlerly disastrous in most states. The most common means of election fraud has traditionally taken place with absentee ballots. Vote by mail expands the potential for "loss" and "stuffing" of ballots immeasurably, depending on which party holds the key election director posts in at the state level and in the largest counties.

Bill Bradbury is one of a kind. Anyone who thinks that his integrity would be matched in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, or any of the other big states is more than a little naive -- and I'm afraid that on that score, Bradbury has to be included.

[bagrman]

8. Stuff the box , or flick a switch.

If there is a way to cheat people will find it. I like vote by mail here in Oregon and could see it working else where but people have to be involved, an equal number from each side, would help. Now what would stop an old fashioned ballot box from being stuffed, you wouldn't know if it was the dems or repubs doing it. IF the top computer at the state was tampered with it would take 1 person 5 minutes in a closet to do it. I'll take my chances with a bunch of screwups trying to stuff an box and not get caught. One other thing that would help in the anti stuffing crusade is make the boxes clear.

Latr
Chris

[TechBear_Seattle]

12. "If there is a way to cheat people will find it." Therefore....

We should just grab our ankles and present a superb, nearly untraceable means of cheating on a silver platter?

[TechBear_Seattle]

11. Currently in office, perhaps. When he gets voted out...? n/t

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. And destroy every last vestige of voter protections

There is no guarantee that you will get a ballot. There is only unreliable and unproven technology that the person who turns in a ballot is the person who supposedly received it. And there is absolutely no guarantee that the proper registered voter received the ballot, signed it, then sold it still blank.

I suppose those are all good things?