I recently spoke off-the-record with a King County Councilmember who is still undecided on Deanron's proposal for mail-only voting. The criteria on which said member will decide are: "Security first and economics second".
Security is a no-brainer: votes can be lost, misdelivered, stolen, bought, coerced, forged, etc. in ways that polling place ballots cannot. More specifics in later posts. For now, I'll address the economics. The standard line from many mail-vote advocates is that it's less expensive than running polling places. But I've yet to see such claims documented by actual facts [If anybody has a rigorous analysis showing that mail-only voting actually saves money, do send it my way]. All the hard evidence that I've seen so far suggests that going to all-mail would be even more expensive than what we have today --
For example, when Pierce County rejected the move to all-mail last year, one of the cited reasons was the higher costs. Deanron's own Vote By Mail proposal acknowledges that at best
the potential exists to yield a higher level of cost-effectiveness over timebut in reality:
It is also important to understand that vote-by-mail will not immediately reduce costs. ... An initial assessment of costs associated with implementing high-speed central count equipment with the existing tabulation software indicates an estimated cost of $1 million.And one must assume that Deanron's estimates are low-balled. Jurisdictions that expand mail voting find that it costs a lot of money:
DES MOINES (AP) -- The trend toward absentee voting is making elections more expensive, election officials say.Well, of course there's more labor involved. It's a more complicated process. And the higher labor costs are an advantage to certain politicians -- Citizen poll workers don't pay union dues, but people who work at King County Elections are required to pay dues to the Teamsters Union which recycles the dues to repay the favor to politicians who create more dues-paying jobs.The push toward voting by absentee ballot makes the election process more labor intensive and means higher costs for printing, mailing and temporary help. The counties also need more space to store ballots before they are mailed and after they are received.
Mail voting also increases external costs -- the cost to the voter of the postage stamp is relatively trivial. The necessity to conduct a protracted intensive media campaign and get-out-the-vote effort during the entire mail ballot period raises the cost to political campaigns. If you want to make politicians even more dependent on money than they already are, increase the number of mail voters.
There is the cost of an untrusted outcome. The untrusted outcome in the 2004 governor's race caused a multi-million dollar recount and election contest. That was largely the consquence of sloppiness, unconscionable mistakes and/or fraud in the processing of mail-in ballots. Many of the underlying problems haven't even been acknowledged by elections officials let alone corrected. If we want to repeat the nightmare of the Rossi-Gregoire contest, the surest way to get there is to increase the number of mail ballots by another 50%.
And most importantly, though harder to quantify, is the cost of diminished public confidence in the legitimacy of elections and the folks who get elected. Deanron and his campfollowers apparently feel differently, but I'm willing to pay a little bit extra to run the election in order to have a government in which I can feel confident that it was legitimately elected. Or, in this case, to both pay a little bit less to run the election and also get a government in which I can feel confident that it was legitimately elected.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 10, 2006 11:59 AM | Email ThisWe all know that 1,700 illegal and invalid votes made Christine Gregoire governor, validating the effectiveness in allowing political operatives to accept and count votes that cannot be truely authenticated, or even count votes that were invalidated.
If we want only valid votes to be counted, then we need human eyes validating voters visually by comparing faces to identification and witnessing voters signing polling books.
Democrats "in power" want to open up their party's ability to cheat, not limit it. This is a coupe d'etat occurring. Republicans will not win close elections again with a Democrat-controlled all-mail system in place. It is the Democrats' highest priority goal, and should be the Republicans' highest priority agenda item to oppose it.
Besides, even if all-mail voting is cheaper, so would a Gregoire-style web-based poll like the one initially setup for the quarter design. Our next governor could be elected with 60 million votes. ;-)
Saving money shouldn't even be a factor in motivating a change of this importance. I don't care if it costs more to retain our current system. There is too much at stake to allow our democracy to be corrupted to save money.
Posted by: MJC on May 10, 2006 01:43 PMWith poll based voting, what you have is an inherent distribution system built at a grassroots level. All of those Grandmas and Grandpas in neigborhoods, churches, community centers, homes, etc. across the state processing and tabulating all of the ballots and doing so for free, or for almost nothing.
This produces many good side effects. It's very difficult to rig election in this manner if basic ballot security can be maintained because of the high degree of distribution. Any one malicious poll worker can only effect a very small number of ballots. And since voting in the polls is very transparent, there are many eyes on the process. I know that I view each worker and my ballot with suspicion and make sure that I alone put it into the ballot counting machine. Checks and balances. Once it is time to deliver ballots to a central counting facility, a large amount of processing, collating, tabulation, authentication, etc. has already been completed. Although there is room for malfeasance at the central facility like we saw with Dean Logan in 2004, it's unlikely there will be tampering with poll ballots because they are already disconnected from the voter. The abuse that occured in 2004 was a manipulation of ballots where their authencity via absentee enclosing envelopes was still in question. Dean Logan counted those ballots.
Now compare and contrast this with all mail voting where all of the counters are at a central facility. Most likely these centralized workers will be paid, unionized workers. They will also be far more likely to be of a homogenous political opinion given the homogeneity of their work, union, etc. Furthermore, the potential for confusion with envelope handling, mistakes in filling out ballots and following instructions, etc. now all fall squarely on this paid workforce to resolve. And that can be very costly. Far better to have individual poll workers help avoid these mistakes in the first place by answering questions and distributing the processing and tabulation load across a large and diverse population.
There are hundred of more examples that one can easily derive from what I've written here as to why poll balloting is far less costly and more secure.
And above all, there is the issue of trust. Does the average Joe trust poll voting where they at least see their own ballot go into a secure box? Or do they trust the mail, where there is a huge number of hands, machines and other middle points of pitfall between a filled out ballot and the proper tabulated result? The answer is obvious.
All mail balloting is a very bad idea designed to increase our dependence on paid union workers and lower the accoutability and integrity of elections. This is where the rubber meets the road in our republic. All who value freedom should sign on to vigorously support Stefan, Richard Borkowski and others in a pan-partisan effort to snuff out this idea before it gains any more traction.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 10, 2006 02:14 PMWe can See Sam Reed's heart.
We can see Bob Terwilliger's heart.
We can see this for what it is....shred the ballots, remark ballots and make up the results because the ballot production and counting is completely centralize...no accountability in the system.
My ballot used to be counted because the poll worker verified who I was then I signed got my ballot and those senior citizens would have killed Goliath over that box making sure it was protected all the way to the counting machine.
Now I feel like the marketing is all a big distraction with Dean and Co. ready to make the results like they should be.
Too bad we did not have firing squads over the fakes in Florida that tried to steal my White House. Chad should have been hanging not hanging chads to steal the vote- Thank God for the Cubans that beat down the doors...they lived in a hell on earth DeanRon is creating....we got a long way to go before we bottom out...my only concern is the left may lock us all up and moderates (i.e. RINOS) have bargained away all our rights trying to compromise with the psychotic left so that just once those wacky leftists will do something that is not of the death culture.
It would be funny to be outright laughing at Ryan Blethen as he is sworn in as Governor in 2012. Especially when he beat Rob McKenna 62% to 38% with 90% of King County voting for Mr. B.
Thanks to SP for giving a voice to the facts of the theft of a nation.
You can find a fairly vigorous debate on the merits of voting by mail here: http://www.blueoregon.com/2006/04/democracy_begin.html
You promote a few urban myths about voting by mail. The reason it is less expensive is that there are no polling places. Your comparisons to Iowa and other localities where they have a mixed system are inaccurate.
Voting by mail will save King County money, compared to the current system where 75% of the voters cast their ballots absentee anyway.
Voting by mail may be an invitation to fraud--I look forward to your future posts on the topic. However, my own study of voting by mail in Oregon and absentee balloting nationwide (reported on here: http://www.sos.state.or.us/executive/policy-initiatives/vbm/execvbm.htm) found no evidence of fraud.
Finally, the record shows that absentee/early voters are actually counted more, not less, accurately than precinct day ballots, where poll workers are operating under severe time pressures.
There are reasons to oppose voting by mail, but the argument you make is mostly false.
Posted by: paul on May 10, 2006 03:53 PMHow can such protection be provided with mail-in ballots?
Posted by: supercat on May 10, 2006 04:18 PMPaul the first clue is that the link is to an goverment (SOS oregon) office document.
Since when did the "goverment" run by the Politicians (whom are more inclined to promote fraud) become the sole basis for your decision of Stefan's Falsehood.
You need to dig further into the subject, and listen to the constituents of those same politicians. You will find that there is no voter confidence in this state. The really shameful aspect is that King County CONTROLS the vote, and they really dont give a hoot what the REST of the STATE thinks......
Stefan has brought forth more discussion on this topic than any other person I know. Use his knowledge, dicipher what you will, and then form your own opinion, but please use ALL the sources, not just a SOS office of Oregon website.
Posted by: Chris on May 10, 2006 04:22 PMMy grandson will never know the feeling of voting freely at a polling place. Now it will seem as cheap as sending in a post card for the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. My local authorities tell me that I can drop off my new mail in ballot in person. I intend to do so for as long as I can hold my nose at our election process.
Posted by: Elaine on May 10, 2006 09:37 PMOregon county clerks have consistently found that a Vote By Mail election costs one-third less than a polling place election.
Even if the cost argument is not persuasive, the primary purpose of Vote By Mail is to encourage people to vote, by making it more convenient, and people have responded by voting more frequently. The 70% of Washington voters that regularly voted absentee before the county option to go all Vote By Mail was implemented already voted their agreement.
Again, absentee voting is voting by mail. Over 70% of Washington voters have been voting this way for years without issue.
Oregon has never hesitated to investigate allegations of voter fraud. Oregon has successfully caught and prosecuted a number of ballot signature forgeries - this is an argument in favor of Vote By Mail - the signature check is a strong safeguard against fraud and it's working.
Voters overcome with nostalgia or distrust of the U.S. Postal Service (which is competent enough to handle bills and packages and other valuable items) can drop their ballot off in person, or even vote in person in an old-fashioned voting booth at the county election office. It's the voters' choice.
And you are welcome to come watch an election in Oregon or at your local county elections office and see for yourself how it works.
Posted by: Anne on May 11, 2006 08:41 AMMy report was commissioned by American University as part of the independent Carter/Baker Commission on the 2004 Election. The director was specifically concerned about election fraud under voting by mail and was a definite skeptic about the system.
So any claim that the report was predisposed to support voting by mail is fallacious. Anne can testify to this since I've been arguing against voting by mail with her on blueoregon.com!
I am not an advocate for or against voting by mail, but I am an advocate of clear and accurate information about the systems. That is not what you are getting here.
Anne- Polling stations in Washington State cost $10 rental. What is the cost in Oregon State? Other aspects of mail balloting are also much more expensive overall. For instance, in King Co has ~1.0m registered voters. Mail ballots must be sent to each person regardless. With poll station ballots, elections official only print up what they think will be needed. Individually mail ballots are quite a bit more expensive. I don't have actual figures (still procrasinating on those open records requests), but I'm told the ballot plus 3 envelopes plus handling costs ~$1.50 per, whereas poll station ballots cost ~$0.35. Elections in each jurisdiction have different costs, requirements, etc. I can easily believe that Oregon State's VBM is cheaper. But I'd want to see the hard numbers for myself.
Paul- I'll find and read your study. (A link would be handy.) Curtis Gans (also from American University) has studied the relationship between vote by mail and voter turnout. His claim is that vote by mail decreases turnout. The UK has reported long-term decline since adopting 100% postal voting. (Though I'd have no idea how to separate the effects of voting systems, voter apathy, etc.).
Posted by: zappini on May 11, 2006 12:19 PMare you paid to act like a moron or is it just a hobby?
Posted by: eric on May 12, 2006 11:54 AMWhy don't you answer my question?
Show me one reason why anyone would consider changing their opinion of you to that of a thinking human being.....
(Betcha can't ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on May 12, 2006 01:41 PM