Kerry Signs on to Oregon's Vote-by-Mail System

[ProSense]

Kerry Signs on to Oregon's Vote-by-Mail System

by Jonathan Singer, Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 03:18:09 PM EST

During the 2004 election, a whopping 86.48 percent of registered voters and an impressive 71.24 percent of the voting age population in Oregon turned in their ballots -- impressive figures for a state without same-day voter registration. The key to Oregon's success in getting voters to actually vote is fairly simple: mailing voters ballots and giving every one of them three weeks to turn it in.

Already, Oregon's system has a big backer on the federal level in the state's senior Senator, Democrat Ron Wyden. But now, The Oregonian's Jeff Kosseff reports that John Kerry has jumped aboard the vote-by-mail bandwagon.

"It works brilliantly, as a matter of fact," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "People have a lot of time to be able to vote. They don't have to struggle with work issues, being sick, other kinds of things. And they have plenty of time to have the kind of transparency and accountability that really makes this system work."

As Kosseff notes, not only does Oregon's vote-by-mail system afford voters with a much easier opportunity to vote, it also costs significantly less than traditional polling systems, with some estimates pegged at 30 percent savings. What's more -- and perhaps more importantly -- a vote-by-mail system "creates a paper trail for every vote."

I'm don't believe that Oregon's system is a panacea for all of the nation's elections woes, nor do I intend to argue that Oregon's system is the right answer for every state and locality around the country. Nevertheless, the system has worked wonders here in the Beaver State, so I'm glad to see that a heavy hitter like John Kerry is willing to offer words of support of voting-by-mail. And if other areas of the country begin to adopt the system -- then all the better for our democracy.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/7/21/15189/7340

posted in GD-P:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2734879&mesg_id=2734879

[sandnsea]

1. And we kept our 2000 Gore/Nader voters

Unlike almost every state in the union, we did not lose that small percentage of Gore/Nader voters from 2000. I've always thought that should be a benchmark to measure what happened in the rest of the country.

Anyway, glad to see JK signing on to our system, it is a good system. It needs one tweak to go national, monitored drop boxes. And we still need registration receipts and some solution to proprietary software. But other than that, it really is the best way to go.

[globalvillage]

2. I really do think you guys have the best solution.

Not the best football team, mind you, but you do rock on the voting thing.

:yourock:

[sandnsea]

3. Well it's Seattle's football team

If it were actually in Oregon... :)

[ProSense]

4. Of course

someone in GD-P is already there with the Bev Harris stuff. Sheesh!

[sandnsea]

5. Oh aargh

I went and responded. I do not understand these people. We have all these machines and other systems because of ballot box stuffing, and yet they think going back to hand counting is going to guarantee elections won't be stolen. If ballots were disappearing from zip codes or a particular mail route, we'd catch it in GOTV because we get updated lists regularly so we aren't calling people who already voted. Just so frustrating to have to explain things over and over and over.

[Island Blue]

6. Wow! 86.48% of registered voters

turned in their ballots. Color me impressed! I'm sure you wouldn't get that high of a percentage in every state, but it would certainly be an improvement. My county has implemented early voting (as have many other places) and that seems to help a lot in getting people to the ballot box, but this would help even more IMO.

[ginnyinWI]

7. Yes, yes, yes!

I've been sold on Vote By Mail since I read the article about it in American Prospect. Sure there may be minor problems with it, but over all it's better than the huge problems we have with the present system
.

[BlueIris]

8. Yeah, we love our vote-by-mail. Kerry's people were quick to thank us

for doing it this way, too. Oregon supporters of the Kerry campaign got a lovely e-mail right after the election congratulating us for our user-friendly, heavily-accessed voting system. Because Kerry and Co. know the best when they see it.

[karynnj]

9. That is so nice that Kerry (or staff) took the time to do that

The system sure seems to have some excellent characteristics. It was annoying seeing a few people condemn it out of hand on DU-P. There skills at identifying flaws would be much better used in the process to fixing it. Just like some companies would have a group of very creative, brilliant employees try to "break" prototypes of new systems - so flaws could be identified and fixed before the system was put out, these people could simply identify the problems (or better yet the problems with possible solutions.) Any system can be manipulated unless there are lots of checks built in - Sandasea's (and others) posts there were great because they showed that Oregon had worked very hard on making this a good system and it looks like they succeeded.