There are some problems (for me, anyway) voting by mail, or absentee...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

First, I love standing in that voting booth, punching down with the Inka-dot or whatever flavor of the month we're using.

Voting booths have a long and mostly honorable history in our country.

Secondly, and probably more important: Those votes are not counted till the rest of the votes are tallied. I want my vote counted right away.

I always have the feeling that the absentee votes could go astray, or get lost, or something. They most likely don't, but...

Persuade me that I'm wrong.

Why should I vote that way?

Have at it!

[Poll_Blind]

1. I never felt that my vote might get lost or anything like that in Oregon.

I actually like it because I can get it out of the way early and know there will be no last minute rushing. We usually mail ours off at least a week or two in advance. In other places they might try shenanigans, but I've never felt that way about my voting in Oregon.

PB

[PoliticAverse]

2. Because your vote by mail is less able to be programmed away by an electronic voting machine? n/t

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. That's a reasonable thought...

We don't use electronic voting machines here, though.

If we did, you would have a very legitimate point.

[PoliticAverse]

7. How are votes tallied/counted? Are there any electronics involved?...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. Actually, I don't know.

[saras]

9. Dunno. In Washington the mail-in votes are counted by machine

And when the machines were first installed during the Bush administration, the issue was raised about the susceptibility to alteration of results by insiders. Their response was the classic shit-eating grin and the words, "You'll just have to trust us."

[hobbit709]

3. how much assurance do you have the machine in the booth is honest?

I flat out don't trust ANY machine. At least a mailin ballot is on an actual piece of paper.

As long as the companies that make the voting and counting machines don't let anyone see the source code, I trust none of them.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. The ballot itself is paper...

I vote on paper in the booth.

When I'm done, I insert it into a machine that counts it as it goes into the container.

We do not use electronic voting machines here.

[hobbit709]

8. Not in most places. California is one of the few.

Even in Austin I don't trust the machines.

[EFerrari]

11. The machine that scans your ballot is a voting machine. n/t

[csziggy]

26. Yes, that is what I thought - that a paper ballot was safe

But our wonderful local supervisor of elections discovered that those machines are easily tampered with - it is documented in the movie "Hacking Democracy". I know the main person in that movie is not admired here, but it did clearly demonstrate that the machines used to count our votes, even the paper ones, are not reliable.

The system currently relies on the people in charge of the machines being honest and knowledgeable enough to insure the reliability of them. If I did not trust Ion Sancho, I would not be sure that my vote was being correctly tabulated. I worry that he will probably retire soon and fear who we might get to replace him.

I want our voting to be as verifiable as ATMs and Vegas gambling machines.

[EFerrari]

29. That's how they tried to stack the Ohio recount, with scanned ballots.

And I guess, they did. Two people went to jail but the recount was a joke.

[csziggy]

30. Yeah they passed laws here but never required that the PAPER ballots be counted

:wtf: Just that they have to be run back through the machines.

Ion Sancho in 2000 was the supervisor of elections that was consulting with the others to help them with their recounts. Our local recount took 45 minutes. He has the machines set to kick out any ballots that have over, under, or questionable votes. In order for a ballot to go into the machine with a bad vote, the voter has to reinsert it numerous times.

BEFORE the court mandated recount, every ballot that would not read when run through once was scanned and a pdf file of all those ballots was posted on the supervisor of elections website. I still have that file and people had to work hard to create bad ballots.

The neighboring county, Gadsden, that had such a high percentage of uncounted votes, had the same technology our county did. But they did not set the machines to kick out bad ballots. Simple as that. The supervisor there did not know it was possible. :mad: That ignorance caused one of the largest percentages of discarded votes in the state in 2000.

Every government entity today pays IT people to manage their computer systems. But many supervisors of elections have no one on their staff to help them set up the voting machines and keep them secure. Imagine trying to run even a small town computer system without making sure they were protected from viruses and malware. But our voting machines do not have that kind of expertise making sure they are secure, because the companies that make the machines have proprietary software and will not allow outside experts access.

[EFerrari]

5. You can walk it in. That's what I do. n/t

[WCGreen]

12. I know this after serving as a Board of Election member here in Cuyahoga County...

The absentees are counted first.

[EFerrari]

14. Maybe in your county they are. That's not true in many venues.

Sometimes they aren't even counted unless the race is close.

[WCGreen]

23. Absentee votes are always counted.

They are as valid as a vote cast at a polling place.

I think you are confusing provisional ballots with absentee.

[EFerrari]

37. Unfortunately, I'm not.

If you want to see, search "absentee ballots not counted".

I vote that way myself but here, I can walk the ballot in and have it scanned.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

15. I wish that were true here.

I would feel a lot more like doing it if it were.

[csziggy]

27. See my post about what came out here in Florida in 2000

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1511127&mesg_id=1511946

I hope it has changed, but it used to not be true. For one thing and part of the whole confusion after election day 2000, absentee ballots were supposed to be postmarked by election day, not received. They allowed a certain amount of time after the election to receive the ballots, but that policy caused some questioning because of some stories that came out.

Allegations were made that on some Navy ships, absentee ballots were collected and mailed the day after election day. There were problems verifying when ballots were mailed, since apparently the Navy does not postmark their mail. It just added to the mess and became the basis for some "military" ballots being challenged and claims that Democrats were trying to take votes away from military personnel.

I haven't checked on how procedures have changed since then.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. When I lived in CA, I had to always vote absentee

Because the nature of my work never promised availability on election day. Now I live in Oregon, where we all vote 'by mail' but I personally deliver mine to the Elections Office directly just because I can.
The 'I'm in the booth' experience is replaced by the 'we have our ballots out over coffee' experience, which can be good for splitting research and such.
The main reason to support vote by mail- if not absentee- is turn out. In 2010, while much of the nation showed low numbers and the Republican wins that go with them, Oregon matched a turn out record from the 80's and like CA, we elected Democrats.

[donheld]

16. I've always been suspicious of the voting booth.

Yes I punch down on the button, but what does that button do? My hope has always been it does what I want it to do, but more and more i've been skeptical of that.
Maybe I'm too cynical. Now days it's hard not to be.

[horseshoecrab]

17. Hi CaliforniaPeggy

Sounds like you might be voting with a special pen to connect an arrow together beside your candidates name?

I can tell you how things are done in my state. We get to the absentee ballots as soon as we can on election day. They are delivered to us in a sealed envelope, (literally with a seal on it) from the election department, along with our whole "kit" for setting up shop in the school gym. If we have a lot of live "business" right away the absentee ballots may have to wait a bit, but we do get to them as quickly as we can.

If you're an absentee voter, we check off your name at both the "in" desk and the "out" desk at the polls, just as if you were there. We then put your absentee ballot into the machine to be read. And that's it - Your ballot is counted.

We election workers/officials sign our names, (too many times to count!) to attest to everything we do at the polls, and that includes attesting to the validity of our books, every ballot we give out and every ballot we take in. We account for ballots that were destroyed because the voter asked for a second one. We account for everything, and that includes our absentee ballots. We have a special marking in our book beside the names of absentee voters. The number of absentee ballots has to match the number of check marks beside absentee voters' names.

In my state, you have to swear that you won't be in town, or are unable to get to a poll on election day if you want an absentee ballot. This means that I spend my lunch hour voting. But it's all good! Whichever method you choose to vote, the main thing is to vote!


Hope that this helps! :hi:


horseshoecrab

[Obamanaut]

18. It isn't that you *should* but that you *can*. No one is making you.

No one is going to try to persuade you. It is your decision. Vote in any manner you choose.

Absentee is a viable, even necessary option for some. If that isn't you, then don't use that option.

That was easy, wasn't it.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

19. I know nobody is making me!

I just wanted to see what people had to say...

That's all.

And yes, that was easy.

[Obamanaut]

31. "Persuade me that I'm wrong" somehow does not sound the same as

"I just wanted to see what people had to say..."

[CaliforniaPeggy]

33. Really. Do they have to sound the same?

[Obamanaut]

34. They don't mean the same, either.

[many a good man]

20. It feels much more "participatory" when you walk into the poll

I'm a Vice-Chair of my precinct and I can't tell you how much I'm blown away by the all the volunteerism and pure effort out of a sense of civic duty that is our system of elections. Sure, there are professional politicians, but this whole thing we call democracy would not exist were it not for the thousands of regular people who give up their time and go out and make the effort. And that includes people like you who volunteer their time and get themselves down to the polls to cast their vote... and maybe chat up the other "volunteers."

As long as you're physically able to get yourself down to your local precinct to vote, please do so! If there's any chance in the world you might not be able to make it, please vote electronically. I think places that only vote electronically are destroying a civic institution and alienating ourselves from the civic tradition that has always been the heart of what we call democracy. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

21. I must be old-fashioned too!

You have said how I feel perfectly.

Thank you...

[RebelOne]

22. Fortunately, my voting place is at the high school

just around the corner from my house. But I did vote by mail in one election.

[AsahinaKimi]

24. My dear Ms Peggy!

I been doing absentee voting for a while now. The only time I walked my vote down to City Hall and handed it to an official was when President Obama was running for President, because after seeing all the misuse in voting, I wanted to make sure my vote was counted on that one.

But the advantages for me are, sometimes I forget there is an election coming up, and when I find a voters ballot in my mailbox, I can jump on it right away... and then put it in the mail box. Hopefully
there will be no mail fraud. Anyway, this is San Francisco, I have never heard any stories of people setting mailboxes on fire.

:hug:

[csziggy]

25. One of the facts that emerged in Florida in 2000

Was that in most counties, absentee ballots were not counted unless they could make a difference in the results. So if a race had a winner by a margin of 200 votes and there were only 50 absentee ballots, they just threw them away.

I found that offensive. I don't vote just because my vote might be the winning one. I vote so my voice is part of the result, even if all it does is let the winners know how narrow a margin they won by. Throwing away one category of votes just because they will not tip the result one way or another is throwing out votes from one group of voters for an arbitrary reason. That reason could be the location of a voter, their color, their ethnic background, their religion - any of those could be used at any time if we don't insist that all votes be counted and included in the results.

Just because someone cannot be at the polling place in the time allotted for voting is not a reason to trash their votes!

Fortunately, because of the spotlight put on this problem in 2000, things have changed. Now, you do not have to give a reason to get an absentee ballot so more people are using them. Because more enlisted people use absentee ballots in many Florida counties, the supervisors of elections are more scrupulous about counting them

[Snoutport]

28. I would love to try to change your mind!!

We do mail voting here in Oregon and the one thing that makes it a resounding success: Over 80% of Oregonians usually vote in an election. 80%!!

I thought I would miss the election booths but I don't. Friends have thrown voting parties. and the election night returns are fast. Since everyone (almost) mails their ballots they all get counted pretty much at the same time.

BUT there is one small problem I see with voting by mail. If the post office goes private then it would mean our votes sit in the hands of a private company and depends on their delivering them by the deadline.

But while we still have mail service, there is no other voting method where more people vote. And the more people who vote, the healthier the democracy. AND there is a signed paper ballot left over for a recount.

(and we're a nice blue state because of it...everyone, no matter how many jobs you are working, can vote, at home, quickly).

I hope y'all are having a great weekend!

[stevedeshazer]

32. My dear CPeg,

Once upon a time, much like you, I loved standing in line at a local polling place.

The bluehaired ladies and once in a while a man would check me in at the local Lutheran church and set me free to mark my ballot in #2 pencil.

That was a really beautiful thing.

Now, I'm older and nearing retirement.

Here in this weird place called Oregon, we decided to do this crazy thing called vote-by-mail. Seems crazy, no?

It's a smashing success. It works. I love sitting around the kitchen table with my family and debating and voting on the spot together.

My elderly parents passed away some time ago, but they were aware of how they wanted to vote, and being able to mail it in made the difference because they couldn't withstand a trip to the polls with a long line.

And there's a paper trail.

:)

[ZombieHorde]

35. In my opinion, nostalgia and tradition are perfectly fine motivators,

as long as the motivated action isn't oppressive. I think you should vote however you wish.

[Major Hogwash]

36. Troublemaker!! Hahahahahaha!!!!!

I used to love going to the polls and voting and rubbing elbows with the other poor peons, but I found out that most of them other people that live in my precinct were voting for the wrong people.
If you know what I mean.
I found out that I was living in an area of town where the people had fallen asleep next to their pods!

So, I started doing the mail-in, early thing a few years ago, and it's much less stressful on me come time to find out that no one I voted for locally or statewide or countywise won. And all dem judges kept their jobs anyway, too.

I did vote for Obama in 2008, and I knew that my vote was probably only one of maybe 100 in my precinct. So, I felt pretty good about that.