Today's Seattle Times editorial endorsing all-mail balloting is so intellectually dishonest and detached from reality it makes me wonder who these people are that write this nonsense and why the Seattle Times keeps them on the payroll -- "To the mailbox, voters"
Last year's gubernatorial election made it embarrassingly obvious that the way we vote needs to be streamlined. The mushrooming popularity of absentee voting has made elections a cumbersome, two-tier process. It only makes sense to embrace the method endorsed by voters.Yes, the problems with our existing elections demand solutions. But the editorial makes no mention of the multitude of problems with mail voting, which was itself to blame for many of the problems with the November election -- the increased opportunity for fraud and identity theft, the higher cost, the two opportunities for every voter's ballot to be lost in the mail; the engineering challenge of correctly accounting for, in King County's case, 900,000 ballots and 900,000 ballot envelopes. In King County last November with a mere 600,000 mail ballots, there were hundreds of ballots that were either reported as tabulated when they were not tabulated, or tabulated when they were not attributed to actual voters. There has never been an explanation how this could have happened and there probably never will be an explanation, so why should any of us be confident that the black hole of mail ballot processing will magically improve if we only increase its workload by 50%?
It is simply irresponsible and a disservice to the public to advocate an increase in mail voting (especially an irreversible increase by making it mandatory) without addressing these very serious problems.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 15, 2005 11:25 AM | Email This
With our operatives in the media endorsing the all mail ballot method we need to prepare for the next election. With media help we can count on all mail balloting.
Each of you needs to register under as many names as you can, use different addresses, PO Box and mail drops. Don't forget, vote early and vote often.
Operatives in the election center you will receive lists of republic precincts that will insure you know which ballots to lose. You will also receive bundles of filled out ballots to insert into these precincts so that the count will balance.
With all of us pulling together will be able to put margins of victory out of reach of any recount effort. We want to avoid at all costs the fiasco of '04. With mail in balloting we'll be able to insure enough ballots with votes for our selection.
Stand by for further instructions from party central command.
Oh! &%@*!? where did I just post the instructions? I was checking the evil SoundPolitics out to see what the enemy is up to. Argh!!! I posted our instructions there by accident! RED ALERT!!!
Posted by: JCM on July 15, 2005 11:50 AMJohn Fund's voting fraud book & findings ignored. No call for re-registraton. No mention of only legal citizens voting. The musings of a detached ivory tower elite editorial board who live in posh neighborhoods. I'm sure their nannies and landscape workers will qualify as legal mail-in voters, too.
Questions: ok--how many mail ballot languages? Ten? Fifteen? Do you have ancient Greek language ballots yet? Can I use my foreign stamps on the envelope? Does a timely Mexico City postmark count? Can I get a bulk vote (sorry, bulk mail) discount on postage rates?
The system right now is ripe is too disjointed and ripe with opportunities for ballot stuffing. One system would be better and since many people in WA state travel a lot - especially the people who make the money and tend to vote republican - mail in ballots are the way to go.
This doesn't mean that King County elections can be trusted to handle mail in ballots though. But, observers can be taken out of geographically spread polling stations and put in charge of watching every step of the process.
The only problem left is a good method to screen voter registration and to screen ballots based on those registrations. That's where the big problem is, whatever the voting method employed.
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on July 15, 2005 12:21 PMI voted by mail until I recently read Fund's book on fraud. I figured convenience was progress in general like the private sector, but I assumed too much with the integrity of the system and the veracity of the count. We'll see...I think the convenience of mail lulled me into not being vigilant and insistent about legal voters' i.d.'s.
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on July 15, 2005 01:19 PMDid it (your Vote) Count?
Personally I like poll place voting, I get to Visit and see how the 3 polling workers Grandma Types whom i have know all my life) are doing.... We have gone to all mail, and I miss that lil sticker I used to wear all day proudly that says "I Voted".
Posted by: Chris on July 15, 2005 01:37 PMHow do you know it works pretty well in Oregon? Because the Oregon SecState said it does? Or did you hear it from an objective source?
And what's the definition of 'pretty well' anyway?
Posted by: larry on July 15, 2005 01:57 PMStefan seems very concerned that mail ballots are ripe for vote fraud. If so, then all people doing vote fraud are currently using absentee ballots. So, what’s the solution? Stefan seems to suggest an absolute ban on absentee ballots. But, if 2/3 of the people are using absentee, and some people must use absentee, then the voters aren’t likely to give up streamlined absentee ballots for inconvenience of going to the polls.
Obviously, if what Stefan says is accurate, going to all-mail ballots won’t increase vote fraud, because all the fraudulant voters are already using absentee.
There are some missing steps in logic here...
First, if you require mail ballots, doesn't the postage stamp constitute a poll tax? I called the SoS office and they say that auditors will accept ballots at the auditor's office (lot of good that'll do in a rural county) and at "at least one other location in the county." So, there go some of the benefits of closing polling locations. I could easily see some Lefty group setting up "voter assistance" locations to help people vote "the right way" and paying for the postage stamp themselves (which might violate the law??) -- not to mention all the coffee and cookies the person can consume!
Second, the homeless and others who registered at government buildings will have to pick up their absentee ballots at said building -- meaning that someone there will have to play Postmaster and hand out envelopes for a month or two before the election. How are the homeless going to prove identity to pick up the ballot? Do you not run into federal postal laws that make it illegal to give someone another person's mail? The SoS's office didn't seem concerned and said that "the absentee rules have been in the WAC for years" -- for whatever that's worth.
Posted by: Mark on July 15, 2005 03:33 PMIn fact - the ONLY people who seem to blindly support the All Absentee voting system are the rabid liberals from Seattle....The *moderate* Democrats are not on board with it!
I believe yet another referendum or initiative is due to bring the idea of an All Mail Voting system to the people for a vote!
Posted by: Deborah on July 15, 2005 08:37 PM