Counting the Vote: the Most Obvious Solution

[Occulus]

By now, some of you may know that I'm a postal employee. While I would, admittedly, like to go to work in another field (in computer animation for film and television, no less), I'm still somewhat proud of the fact that I am part of a system that helps this country function. If the postal system were to halt tomorrow, our nation's economy and business dealings, as well as (obviously) our written communications, would grind to a halt. Postal employees hold collectively within our hands a very great deal of power- quite honestly, power to bring this nation to its knees, were we to fully exercise that power.

We are not about that.

Above all other points of pride, postal employees hold dear to their hearts the concept of free speech. We ensure and enshrine this concept each and every minute of every day. Free, open, honest, and confidential communication is the hallmark of our purpose, the mark of our (lowly) station, and we go to great lengths to ensure the security and integrity of our mail system. As I said in a previous diary, you pay, you play. It really is just that simple.

We care not one fig for the content of your speech. We do not care- at all- that your political views differ from ours. We WILL sort your mailings, accurately, quickly, and without interference. This is our job, and we all- every last one of us- take great pride in the fact that we, and we alone, absolutely guarantee that your speech WILL NOT be interfered with in any way, at all, period.

That is our job, and we do that job more effectively, and cheaper, than any other mail system on the planet.

You already trust us to do that job, and you do so each and every day. Your bills, your college and high school transcripts, your resumes- EVERYTHING you mail will, and I mean will, get to its destination. YES, there are incidents in which mail gets delayed. YES, mail sometimes gets stuck in or under a machine and we find it later and gape at the postmark date- horrified at the fact that we failed that ONE piece of mail. VERY occasionally, the piece CANNOT be delivered, and is wasted, but that's pretty damn rare when you consider the volume of mail we handle daily.

The sole job of the USPS is to quickly and accurately sort the mail- all of it- without exception or bias of ANY kind. Our jobs depend upon this, to the point that the Postal Inspection Service has the authority of law enforcement. These people carry GUNS, to ensure that your freedom of speech is not compromised, EVER- and woe to those who try to subvert our system.

All this is a preamble to a very obvious question. Our voting system is, nationally, in shambles. Voting irregularities void ballots across the nation in each election. The voter rolls are subject to myriad laws across various states, each of which has its own criteria as to which votes should be counted, what voters should be purged, and how, and so on.

My solution is simple: why shouldn't we put the USPS in charge of counting the votes?

We already have machines you and I trust daily to sort your mail, and there's no reason at all why these same machines cannot be trusted to count your votes. We touch your lives on a daily basis, and the machinery we use could very, very easily be modified to count votes on, say, a 3" x 5" card; such pieces are INCREDIBLY well-suited to our equipment. Just set up a voting machine that prints the vote on a card, and let us have at it. We can have the votes in a nationwide election counted in HOURS.

This isn't fantasy. In TWO HOURS last night, myself and my coworker sorted over 40,000 pieces of mail- all disparate pieces, cards, letters, bills, absentee ballots, and so on. If you multiply that by twelve identical machines- which is what we have in our plant- the entire vote of the state of Michigan could be counted in one or two eight hour shifts, if the ballots are suited to the sorting machines.

Now apply that speed and accuracy to the entire country. You can certainly see what I'm getting at.

The cards I'm proposing are ideal for our equipment. They feed though the machines quickly, and with remarkably FEW jams in the machine. Even when they do get mangled (as does, on occasion, happen), they're still completely readable, and not "spoiled" at all. We automation clerks actually seek out such cards, to give us a rest break while we're sorting our mail. They're easy to run through the equipment, and they sort very, VERY well.

Our sorting machines sort such cards easily. It's simplicity itself.

So why don't we create a voting machine that prints a 3x5 card ballot result for each candidate, to be fed into postal machinery? This is a solution to the voting problem I've never once seen even proposed, anywhere, in any discussion of the topic. Why is that? We already trust the USPS to handle things important to us on a DAILY basis; SURELY, our vote is just as important as- no, more important than- our bills or our letters to Grandma. In addition, the entire nation, without exception, trusts the USPS to handle mailings quickly, accurately, and in a nonpartisan manner, and on a daily basis.

Yet for some reason, nobody, and I mean nobody, ever, has proposed that the USPS be in charge of counting the vote!

It's the most obvious solution there is to the issue of counting the vote, and as a postal worker, I'm somewhat shamed that I didn't see that solution sooner. So here, then, are some proposed details of my solution.

Each voter could cast their ballot on a machine similar to the electronic voting machines some areas use today, but constructed and maintained by the USPS. Access and monitoring of the equipment could be handles by the Postal Inspection Service. Each machine would do three things: allow the voter to cast their ballot by touchscreen, record and store on a 3x5 card each candidate choice, individually, that the voter selects, and print a comprehensive, complete list of the voter's choices, to be held by the voter in case they wish to confirm- at will- that their vote was counted.

At the time of the finalization of the voters' choices, a single card would be printed, containing a random number corresponding internally to the voter's ballot as it appears onscreen. The vote would not be cast officially until the voter confirms that the names onscreen actually correspond to their vote; at the time of confirmation, a 3x5 card would be printed showing ALL that voter's choices, cumulatively, and the random number.

Internally to the voting machine, each choice would be printed, all together, on a 3x5 card, with the voter's random number assigned to that ballot. The random number would be used ONLY for verification that that voter's ballot had been counted in the official tally, should that become necessary. The voter's name would not be coupled with this number. Each candidate vote cast would be printed on another, individual 3x5 card (for a total of two cardstocks per machine); these individual candidate cards would be fed into a machine similar to a Delivery BarCode Sorter, or DBCS- one of the machines that sorts your mail on a daily basis.

The sortplan for these machines would be assembled by postal in-plant support using a list provided by the BOE and confirmed by the candidates. That sortplan would then be sent to both the BOE AND the media to ensure that all candidates appear in the sortplan; the public would see this sortplan before any vote was counted. After confirmation, that sortplan would be loaded into the machine, and the candidate cards would be sorted in the exact same way your mail is sorted.

These machines keep stats as a matter of course: how many went into which bin is the only statistic one would need to count the votes. Due to the speed and the uniform nature of the ballots, the entire vote count could be attained within hours of the closing of the polls, and with a minimal error rate- an error rate identically small to the sort error rate of your daily mail (and again, this is a very small percentage of all items sorted). Errors would be hand sorted and the counts of all bins confirmed, just like we already do with letters that our machines can't sort for one reason or another.

Crossposted to Activism HQ and a Kos diary

This solution is blindingly obvious. It therefore comes as no surprise that it has never once been proposed, in any forum that I am aware of, and in no discussion I'm aware of. Forest, for the trees.

Postal employees are uniquely qualified to count our votes as no other group of people are, and the trust in this system is already very well established. We are not partisan, at all, period. Under this system, your vote WILL be counted, and with the random confirmation number I mentioned, you could simply go to your postmaster to confirm that your vote was indeed counted. In the event of a hand recount, you would have a slip showing your vote, and a number to isolate that vote so nobody else could claim it.

The system I'm proposing is already fair to all, because we already use it impartially. We use this same sort of system minute by minute, every hour of every day. There is NO reason under the sun why postal employees should NOT b given the trust of counting our vote. We are, quite honestly, the only nonpartisan communication system in this country, and I can guarantee you that, under such a system, we will count your vote fairly, honestly, and accurately.

The fact that we already provide such a trust is nothing more than the strongest possible reason why we should be counting the vote as well as the normal, everyday mail. You, everyone reading, already trust us on a daily basis, and with good reason.

I can personally guarantee that, under this system, the vote would be counted quickly, fairly, and accurately. After all- it could be MY vote I'm sorting, and I would treat every ballot as if it WERE mine. I know my coworkers would do the same. That's our job as things already stand, and I would be damn PROUD to extend that job to the vote itself.

We, the People, deserve nothing less.

[Patchuli]

1. I'd certainly trust you guys

over the way it's done now!! Go USPS!

[dkofos]

2. Makes more sense than having diebold count the votes

But tell me, who makes the sorting machines??

[Occulus]

8. Postal R&D designs, them, I think

and the equipment we use is built by Siemens and Electrocom Automation. Both specialize in mail processing equipment, and they do it very very well.

[annabanana]

3. This suggestion is certainly no more "extraordinary" than

others that have been proposed.

America's nonpartisan civil service is one of our greatest achievements. I am sure that, given time and resources, the current cabal would compromise every inch of it.

I think the post office much more reliable an organization than the current "commissioner of elections" system.

[sce56]

4. Dupe please change into one thread

[MADem]

6. Uh, this is the OP's ORIGINAL essay--he's soliciting responses in two

separate forums on the board. Often, people who read GD don't read ACTIVISM, and vice versa.

FWIW, DUPES are for news items in LBN, not original work.

[MADem]

5. In general, I would agree with you that USPS employees are fine people

But we're dealing with BUSHCO here. He doesn't like a level playing field. And the odds are good that he'd round up a few guys he could bribe, or with predelicitons exactly like this, on the inside, to take care of his crew in the rough places:

But now that my postman, Alan Gagne, is dead, maybe they will. We were stunned to read about the death, at age 54, of one of our Brookline, Mass., neighbors, who also happened to be one of the mail carriers in our section of town. But not as stunned, apparently, as the U.S. Postal Service, which discovered that his first-floor apartment contained piles upon piles (upon drawer-fulls upon closet-fulls) of undelivered mail, some of it apparently dating back to his earliest days in the post office back in the 1980s.

The Boston Globe reported that his neighbors estimated that it required four or five mail trucks to haul away the crates of undelivered mail. A spokesman for the Postal Service said that, with the employee dead from an apparent heart attack, the matter would likely remain “a mystery.” I can’t pretend I know what the guy was thinking. Maybe that, with all those catalogs, the mailbag was just a little too heavy, a hernia in the making. As to why he kept it all, I have no idea either. Perhaps he didn’t really believe in recycling. Or, like those piles of old New Yorkers in my home, he planned to get around to reading them … eventually.

The Postal Service spokesman said that most of the items found were what would be considered junk mail, like advertising circulars and catalogs. But he acknowledged that the truckloads did also contain some first-class mail. I confess I find it hard to believe that we haven’t been getting all our catalogs. But I’m sure we’ve been deprived of some important missives and other critical deliveries. At the very least, that haul of undelivered mail must have included all those thank-you notes--for gifts and other kindnesses--that I have been awaiting, in some cases for as long as I have been living in my neighborhood. (Conversely, I assure all my neighbors that I wrote them those thank-you notes and left them for our mailman to pick up.) And perhaps we shouldn’t even discuss the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, episodes one through 11, that seem to have gone astray.

But most important to me is all those bills from Comcast, Verizon, Visa and AmEx that, I swore to customer-service representatives, never arrived at my house. In fact, I expect the apologies from those companies to start pouring in. It would be nice if they came with refunds of those obscene overdue charges inflicted upon me. Comcast, you can go first: a good start would be waiving the $6.01 late charge we discussed Tuesday.

Finally, a little warning to all my friends who might have been late with my birthday cards today. Alan is dead. You no longer have any excuse. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321634/site/newsweek/

[Occulus]

9. That's a shock, and I've heard similar stories through the years, but

I would expect, were the USPS to count the votes, the transportation would be accompanied by both the media and the Postal Inspectors.

And you really don't want to be on the bad side of a Postal Inspector. They gleefully nail wrongdoing to the wall.

[MADem]

11. Well, the media are a bunch of lapdogs

And all BushCo would need to do is arrest a few Postal Inspectors, arrange for everyone to think they went on short, unanticipated vacations, haul them to Gitmo, waterboard and torture them, threaten their families, and then brainwash them to do his bidding!! Then, you'd end up having conversations with Postal Inspectors along these lines:

Say, Fred, where were you last week?

I, uh....I went on vacation....yeah, that's the ticket...to, uh....the Carribean....uh, yeah, that's it!!!"

Well, you sure have a tan, except on your head--you must have had good sunscreen--it looks like you wore a BAG over your head!! (chuckle, chortle)

Unnnh...yeah, sunscreen...uh huh....WELL!!! Gotta go!! I'm in charge of the USPS vote count for OHIO, doncha know!!! See ya!!!

Of course, you do know I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but those bums, I put NUTHIN' past 'em!!!!

[MissWaverly]

14. I would trust you over some secret private company any day

I do not want my government tossed into the hands of private corporation to handle.

[rucky]

7. K&R!

Love to see innovative ideas on the DU!

[Cleita]

10. We should have unbiased outside auditors to verify the counts.

It's proper accounting protocol. The difference is that votes are counted instead of money. Your system would be perfect for that. Maybe we should petition our state election officers to do this.

[Fly by night]

12. I would like to nominate high school honor societies as the vote counters.

The kids are obviously bright enough to be able to count paper ballots, high schools are distributed roughly according to population, it would energize the next generation to become more interested in politics and it would cost nothing -- I'm sure the honor societies would take this on as a public service just for the prestige of it. Wadda ya think?

I have nothing against USPS, but I like the idea of having kids (even only 16 and 17 year olds, so they wouldn't be counting their own votes) to the deed.

[2008]

13. "bring this nation to its knees"?

First, let me say that I don't doubt for a second that you are a wonderful person and a dedicated worker.

But as a former online retailer who sent and received dozens of packages a week, my personal experience was that at least 5-7% (and that's a conservative estimate) of packages mailed through USPS never arrived at their intended destination. That unfortunate fact eventually became a part of the cost of doing business, and forced me to switch to more expensive and more reliable private carriers.

As to bringing the country to its knees, I can't think of a package that can't be sent by UPS or other private carriers, a message that can't be sent electronically, or a legal document that can't be sent by the thousands of messenger services which already exist nationwide. It seems to me that the greatest impact USPS has on the industry is that of undercutting, through taxpayer subsidization, private carriers and thereby causing those private carriers to have to try harder.

Some of the USPS employees I've dealt with from the civilian side of the counter have been outstanding people - conscientious, professional, polite, adept at listening and communicating - and I'm sure you're one of them; but unfortunately, from my experience, you're in the minority.

[Festivito]

15. Um, no, both sides need be there, and you're not set up for that.

It would be nice if we could trust the USPS forever and dump it into the hands of fair people and be done with it, done with the hard work of fighting for democracy. But, the truth is, as I see it, we will never be done fighting for the right to govern ourselves over those who would wish to take advantage of others.

At least we are nowhere near that day yet.