In time for the King County Council's consideration of Deanron's proposal for all-mail voting--
The most astonishing thing about voting by mail is how unreliable and error-prone the whole process is. Never mind the bungled election of 2004, a close look at King County in November 2005 (Deanron's "comeback" election) shows that the total number of mail ballots that were tainted, spoiled, mishandled or otherwise questionable is nearly 20%.
Although advocates have sold the belief that mail voting is simple and reliable, the end-to-end process is actually far more complex than polling place voting. And with the added complexity comes a variety of errors. Ineligible votes get counted and eligible votes don't get counted. Election officials and postal workers make mistakes that cause voters unnecessary inconvenience and disenfranchisement. Otherwise eligible voters make mistakes which are easier to make than with polling place voting (or don't occur at all with polling place voting) and unwittingly disenfranchise themselves without notice from the elections office. Here is an accounting of the various bungled mail ballots in King County from November 2005
| Error type | Number | Percentage |
| Provisional ballots issued to absentee voters | 4,292 | 1.1% |
| Mail ballots returned too late | 4,210 | 1.0% |
| WANDA rejects | 1,589 | 0.4% |
| Empty and spoiled ballots | 134 | 0.03% |
| Ballots from previous election | 434 | 0.1% |
| Duplicated ballots | 60,163 | 15.0% |
| Resolved signature problems | 3,213 | 0.8% |
| Unresolved signature and other problems | 3,705 | 0.9% |
| Double votes - 2 absentee or abs.+prov. | 20 | <0.01% |
| Challenged ballots counted before adjudication | 127 | 0.03% |
| Total | 77,887 | 19.4% |
[Sources for the table: Mail Ballot Report, "Batch Accountability Spreadsheet", transaction logs. the percentages are out of the total of 401,125 mail ballots returned, see end of entry for details]
Provisional ballots: Most provisional ballots cast in King County are replacement absentee ballots. In November 2005, 4,292 provisional ballots (60% of all provisional ballots) were cast by voters who had been issued an absentee ballot. In November 2004, half the provisional ballots were cast by absentee voters. If the goal of mail voting is to prevent people from having to go to a polling place on election day, then the voters who requested a mail ballot but cast a provisional ballot represent failures in the process which caused the voter to seek a replacement ballot on election day. If mail voting is made universal, then the demand for provisional replacement ballots will increase proportionally. Indeed, if neighborhood polling places are closed, obtaining a replacement ballot on election day will only be harder than it is today, with more voters effectively disenfranchised.
Ballots returned too late: 4,210 ballots in November 2005 are recorded as having been "returned too late" to be counted (envelope postmarked after election day). This count does not include any additional ballots that may have arrived after the certification deadline. Elections officials have told me that many voters apparently believe mistakenly that it is sufficient to put a ballot in the mail on election day, when in fact an actual postmark stamp is required. It's not always obvious whether an item dropped into the mail on a given day will carry that day's postmark. Voters who wait to vote until election day should go to a post office to get their ballot envelope hand-stamped if they want to ensure that their vote will be counted. That would seem to obviate much of the alleged convenience of voting by mail. Election workers must manually examine every postmark to determine whether the ballot is eligible. Mistakes and subjective judgment calls are made. (See my report of the canvassing board's review of postmarks last November). Voters who believed they were voting on time but did not have their ballots counted were effectively disenfranchised.
WANDA rejects: "WANDA rejects" are ballots that had been invalidated after they were mailed to the voter but returned nevertheless. The "Batch Accountability Spreadsheet" indicates that 1,589 "Wanda rejects" had been returned in November 2005 (this is a suspicious discrepancy with the Mail Ballot Report). Unfortunately, the ballot accounting system cannot identify these ballots, so it's not clear whose ballots these were and why they were returned. All I can conclude from the available data is that these ballots were returned when they should not have been returned. A review of ballot envelopes indicated that some of the WANDA rejects in 2004 were apparently counted and with no corresponding audit trail in the ballot accounting records.
Empty and spoiled ballots, ballots from previous elections: A total of 568 ballots in November 2005 were accounted for in these categories in the Mail Ballot Report. While it's possible that some of these were intentional protest votes, most likely these represent careless voter error. One source of inadvertent ballot spoilage is when a voter corrects a mark and naively initials or signs the correction, which is a violation of state law. These categories of errors routinely occur with mail voting and voters have no way of learning that they made an error on their ballot. With polling-place voting, these errors either can't occur at all, or are easily detected and corrected.
Duplicated ballots: These are cases where the voter's original ballot markings are unreadable by the machine or in some way ambiguous. The election workers "duplicate" the ballot by marking a new ballot based on their guess as to what the voter intended. Polling place voters who overvote or otherwise spoil their ballots get immediate feedback that their ballot is defective. They can exchange their spoiled ballot for a clean replacement on the spot. With mail voting there is no feedback to alert the voter of a problem. Returning a ballot that has mistakes and correction marks leaves the voter at the mercy of the election workers and canvassing board members who can only guess at the voter's intent. [See my photos of some of the inconsistent "voter intent" determinations made by the canvassing board last November here and here. Clearly this is a wildly subjective and error-prone process]. Because of ballot secrecy, nobody knows who cast the duplicated ballots. The voter never learns that there was a problem with his ballot, let alone how the election workers guessed at the voter's intent. There is no way to know how accurate the duplication process is. Because the tabulated ballot is filled out by someone other than the voter, every "duplicated" ballot should be considered suspect. (The number 60,163 was obtained by summing the "duplicated" rows of the "Tabulated" column in the Batch Accountability Spreadsheet. It does not include duplicated provisional (replacement absentee) ballots, so this presumably understates the actual number of duplicated ballots by several hundred)
Resolved signature problems. According to the Batch Accountability Spreadsheet, 3,213 ballot envelopes were "rebatched", indicating that there had been a problem with the voter's signature and that the problem had subsequently been resolved. On its face this indicates that an error-correction mechanism kicked in, but each instance actually represents a failure. About 1,000 of these cases were when the signature on the envelope was determined not to match the signature on the registration record. Some of these cases may involve ballot theft, i.e. the first ballot and/or the replacement signature were submitted by an impostor. I would assume though that most of these were cases where the correct voter's actual signature was wrongly rejected in the first place. The voter was wrongly inconvenienced and forced to submit a new registration form or signature affidavit, obviating the alleged convenience of voting by mail. This also raises questions about the accuracy of signature verification and the number of mismatching signatures that are wrongly accepted that we'll never know about. (Indeed, the transaction log shows that 6,810 envelopes were initially rejected for signature mismatch, but about half of these rejections were reversed within 24 hours, presumably upon supervisor review. This confirms the hypothesis that the process is highly subjective). Another 1,000 or so of the rebatches were cases where the voter initially neglected to sign the envelope. Unlike the falsely mismatched signature, this error is the voter's fault. But this is yet another mistake that a voter can make with mail voting that cannot be made in polling place voting, diminishing the alleged convenience of voting by mail.
Unresolved signature problems and other rejected ballots. The Mail Ballot Report lists a total of 3,705 DIMS rejections for reasons other than "returned too late". Most of these are signature problems such as missing or mismatched signature (see above) or "no signature on file" (see Larry "I voted, I want my vote to count. No bunch of elected Republican officials or party hacks are going to keep me from having my vote count." Phillips). Some of the unresolved signature mismatches are cases where the wrong person signed the ballot. Others are cases where the correct voter's signature was wrongly rejected and the voter was unable to correct the problem in time. Likewise with unsigned envelopes. Analysis of the transaction log suggests that the average (and median) time to correct a missing signature is 15 days and the mean and median to correct a signature mismatch is 18 days. That doesn't always leave enough time to correct a problem if the ballot happens to be processed toward the end of the cycle. Among the other unresolved problems listed in the Mail Ballot Report are 24 cases of "NIB", ("Not in batch"), meaning that the computer records show that a ballot was returned but that the ballot cannot be found.
Mishandled Double votes. The audit trail indicates that 56 voters returned both an absentee and a provisional ballot. In 8 of these cases both ballots were counted, even though the system is supposed to prevent double counting. In another 9 cases, the voter's absentee ballot had been rejected for signature mismatch, while the same voter's provisional ballot had been rejected on the grounds that an absentee ballot had been submitted. The default assumption in the latter cases would be that someone other than the voter cast the absentee ballot and the provisional ballot is a bona fide replacement. Thus looking at the voters in whose names both an absentee ballot and a provisional ballot were returned, the total error rate of improperly doubly accepted plus improperly doubly rejected is a staggering 30%. The audit trail also indicates that 3 voters submitted two absentee ballots where both were counted.
Challenged ballots counted before adjudication. As I reported back in December, 104 (41%) of the absentee ballots returned by challenged voters were counted before the challenges could be adjudicated. That number did not include the 23 challenged voters who returned their ballots before the challenges were filed.
The above accounting only includes those errors for which I could find a record. Raise your hand if you believe there were no other errors.
This table explains how I arrived at the number of Ballots Returned that was used to calculate percentages at top.
| Returned on time, entered in batches | 391,034 |
| Returned too late | 4,210 |
| WANDA rejects | 1,589 |
| Provisional ballots | 4,292 |
| TOTAL | 401,125 |
80% went through because everything that was supposed to happen, did.
Which of these errors do you believe that "few people" would call errors?
Posted by: SouthernRoots on May 22, 2006 02:50 AMOK, let's not call them errors - what name would anyone suggest to call the 77,887 ballots not counted as the voter wishes?
I'm a Democrat, but for the sake of good government, we have to set partisan squabbling aside for this issue and ask ourselves, "Is a 20% problem rate with counting ballots acceptable?"
We should all be appalled and demand accountability - accountability that will be even farther away if 100% Vote by Mail is implemented.
Posted by: Insider on May 22, 2006 03:10 AMIn addition to all of the council e-mail addresses and phone numbers, there are maps for folks to determine who is their council member if they don't know due to redistricting.
Posted by: Insider on May 22, 2006 04:27 AMFirst, let's all remember that a large percentage of King County voters vote permanent absentee already so much of what is here must be historically consistent? Is it? I see no comparison with anything from 2000 or any year but 2004 and 2005.
The problems discussed in this piece seem to be mostly under the control of the voters. Late postmarks, incorrect marking of ballots, sending back unmarked ballots, etc. are all problems but they can easily be mitigated with a voter education program. It also must be pointed out that only when it corroborates the authors goal does he compare Nov. 2005 with Nov. 2004. In other words there is no comparison that says we should stay with the status quo of 60% of the voters using vote-by-mail while the rest go to the polls.
So what is the real reason for this drive against vote-by-mail? It is clear that King County going vote-by-mail does not fit into the RNC's plans to force Voter ID on all voters in order to keep people away from the polls.
If voters vote-by-mail they don't have to show a picture ID card. If voters vote-by-mail the disabled, poor, minorities, and the rest who would be involved in the RNC voter suppression will be able to vote freely without having to get a picture ID if they don't already have one.
If voters are forced to go to the polls only (and that would be Nirvana for the Republicans)then there will be a large disenfranchisement.
All of this doesn't even discuss the fact that without vote-by-mail we revert back to poll site voting with Diebold TSx voting machines. How do you Green Party folks explain this one away? You can't have it both ways.
Posted by: DemVoter on May 22, 2006 04:32 AMKing County already owns 740 optical scan machines, which, with a series of robust audits during the canvass process, were found by a CalTech-MIT study to be amoung the most reliable count devices when used at the polls with the second chance option activated.
The Elections Office has erroneously told the public that HAVA requires touchscreen machines such as the Diebold TSx, and has used this fallacious excuse (dare we call it what it is - a lie?!) to forge ahead with leasing some of these fatally flawed devices.
HAVA requires devices that aid voters of all abilities and disabilities. The best available, and the most practical, are ballot marking devices that work with the voter using a variety of tools (headsets for the visually impaired, soft touch and sip-puff user interface for the motor-impaired and paralyzed, etc.) to mark the voter's ballot for them and to check and confirm the voter's choices on a standard optical scan ballot. These devices are also LESS EXPENSIVE than the touch screen machines.
The ballot marked using these tools in a privacy booth at the poll site is then tabulated in the same manner as the other ballots, which preserves the disabled voter's 14th Amendment due process rights to mark their ballot in privacy and have their ballot handled and counted in the manner as all other ballots.
King County's solution does not preserve these important rights for disabled voters.
What King County intends to do, is create second class citizens of the disabled community by forcing the disabled to use the Diebold touchscreens - with their well-known worse performance - they have leased, which other voters are forced to vote by mail, regardless of whether they accept the risks their ballot won't be counted or not.
This is a terrible way to run an election office. After four years of this, isn't it time we told Ron Sims and Dean Logan "enough" already?!?!?!
Posted by: Disabled Advocate on May 22, 2006 05:05 AMThat said, one of the comments raises an important issue, and I'd like to digress for just one comment:
Disabled Advocate - I was interested in several points you made, and would like to take a look at some of the evidence you have. Would you please email me? (Or put up links here, if you prefer.)
(For some time, I have been arguing that we should move to a system of paper ballots - but paper ballots marked and read by machines. I even put up a long post here a while ago sketching out such a system. I thought it could be made to work for the disabled, too, but never worked out the details.)
Posted by: Jim Miller on May 22, 2006 07:04 AMApparently you missed this: "Otherwise eligible voters make mistakes which are easier to make than with polling place voting (or don't occur at all with polling place voting) and unwittingly disenfranchise themselves without notice from the elections office."
The point was that, while it's true that these are problems caused by voters, these problems would NOT occur, or would be immediately noticed and corrected, at the polling place.
Any voters who want to avoid showing picture ID can still vote by mail if they choose, although IMHO this is a fictitious problem. How many people would truly be disenfranchised by the requirement to show picture ID at the polls? Would it be anywhere near the 20% errors that resulted from vote-by-mail in the last election?
Posted by: KAB on May 22, 2006 07:59 AM
Any proof of this accusation?
and the rest who would be involved in the RNC voter suppression
Any proof of this accusation?
If voters are forced to go to the polls only (and that would be Nirvana for the Republicans)then there will be a large disenfranchisement.
Any proof of this accusation?
Just because you really, really, really believe Republicans go to bed at night dreaming of denying the vote to anybody who doesn't vote for the GOP doesn't make it so.
If you really cared about the process of ensuring each vote is counted properly, you'd throw out your half-baked, partisan conspiracy theories and focus on correcting the problems. But instead, you pull a bunch of unfounded 'Republicans eat babies' nonsense out of your backside and call it an argument. You're pathetic.
Posted by: jimg on May 22, 2006 08:29 AMAutoMark is made by ES&S, but it works with any optical scan ballot (not just ones for their op-scanners, I believe). It reads in the ballot, lets the person vote using a touch-screen, prints their votes on the ballot and then spits out the ballot to be read by any op-scan ballot reader. http://www.vogueelection.com/products_automark.html
VotePad is not computerized at all, and it was developed by Washington State's own elections activist Ellen Theisen along with others. It basically is a sleeve into which a ballot gets inserted with holes where the marks should go. It can be connected to an audio tape of the ballot. There's a very good description on the front page of their website. http://www.vote-pad.us/
Twisted logic? Nope, just what passes for thought process in some DemVoter's minds.
Posted by: Darth Voter on May 22, 2006 09:02 AMIn the back of my mind is this nagging thought that this move to all mail-in ballots is some sort of control take-over by our government to get the results that they wish on the important issues of our lives.
What also disturbs me is the destroying of the connection to the community that all mail-in voting will bring. I love to meet and talk to my neighbors at my polling place, drinking coffee and noshing cookies (Hey Jim! How’s it going?). The elderly poll workers I see every election are wonderful to talk to and seem happy to see me. I love the attention, it makes voting all the more sweeter. This community interaction will be lost forever. Just another “brick in the wall”.
+1 to the comments by Disabled Advocate, JBG, and Insider.
Posted by: zappini on May 22, 2006 09:50 AMWhat G. Jiggy just posted was pure gold. Thanks!
A friend said that with a move to All Mail Voting we are moving from a many eyes system to a many hands system and I couldn't agree more. I agree with all three points you made. Well said.
I agree with Insider that we need to put partisan
squabbling aside. Our elections are just too important and we need to band together so we can watch each other like hawks to make sure that things are done correctly. We need to make our partisan differences WORK FOR US as checks and balances.
I agree with Disabled Advocate. I understand also that we have enough optical scan machines to use at the polls if we keep our poll voting system. If we are forced to go to All Mail Voting, the option would be a mail ballot or a Diebold Touchscreen at one of the remaining polling sites. Both are worse (less transparent, less accurate, less secure) options than our current polling system.
I suggest that letters are written to the councll members THIS WEEK about your concerns. I understand they will be making a decision on All Mail Voting very soon. (In fact I understand they are meeting to discuss it right now.) I also suggest that people who are absentee voters change their status to poll voters in protest. Lastly, I suggest that people write letters to newspapers about this issue.
Posted by: Juli Pettingill on May 22, 2006 10:08 AMThat's the main reason why we should stick with polling place voting. The distributed nature provides lots of extra help and eliminates almost altogether many common errors. Voters can not overvote at the polls and they are warned when they undervote in case it was inadvertant. Voters always have someone to ask for help. And voters are all under the watchful eye of each other, observers and polling place voters discouraging any misconduct.
Mail balloting is a bad idea because it introduces so many more places for error and mishandling. There will always be a greater percentage of mistakes made with mail ballot voting simply because there are more places and people touching each ballot, and less on site help to the voter that results in clerical errors.
Anyone who argues for mail balloting as a more accurate and acountable means of voting is simply wrong.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 22, 2006 11:00 AMTypical lib, thinking that the only people that should have their vote count are the "enlightened elite"!
Posted by: Fred on May 22, 2006 11:10 AMPosters have mentioned banks and the IRS by comparison. Good analogy. Many (most?) checks and tax returns are not machine-readable, and require a human to interpret what the person wrote. Are those "errors"?
I define an "error" as a ballot that was not counted in accordance with the voter's wishes, or was counted when the voter was not eligible to vote. By this definition, only a tiny fraction of the ballots had errors.
I wish we could improve the accuracy of machine reading. I support better voter education, better machines, and stricter standards when human intervention is required. I also support research into online voting, which has the potential to provide a great user interface and eliminate errors, if/when we can prevent fraud and accidental malfunctions.
Posted by: Bruce on May 22, 2006 11:12 AMPoll ballots are basically ready to count. Ocassionally a poll ballot might have marks or damage that requires duplication, but since it's a raw ballot that has already gone through a scanner in most current polling places in WA, it's pretty much ready to go to tabulation. On the other hand, absentee ballots are fraught with errors. Errors in postmarking, signature authentication, overvoting, not using the correct envelopes, wrong ballot, duplicates, duplicates of provisionals, etc.
There are a whole host of "errors" with absentee ballots that can never even happen with polling place ballots. All of that extra error is cut out of the equation as is multiple human handlers, postman, family members dropping off mail, etc. There is simply more room for legitimate error because there are far more steps to the process.
When you say:
I wish we could improve the accuracy of machine reading. I support better voter education, better machines, and stricter standards when human intervention is required. I also support research into online voting, which has the potential to provide a great user interface and eliminate errors, if/when we can prevent fraud and accidental malfunctions.
what you are basically saying is that you acknowledge that polling place ballots are more secure and less prone to error, in other words you agree with Stefan's post.
In fact the MIT study that has been touted by the vendors supposedly proves that DREs provide far fewer residual votes than any other system. Unfortunately that study is skewed by the fact they used reports from SoS's and not actual poll site data. The fact is that you need to be careful which study you quote and who did the study and what was their ultimate goal.
Disabled Advocate said, "HAVA requires devices that aid voters of all abilities and disabilities. The best available, and the most practical, are ballot marking devices that work with the voter using a variety of tools (headsets for the visually impaired, soft touch and sip-puff user interface for the motor-impaired and paralyzed, etc.) to mark the voter's ballot for them and to check and confirm the voter's choices on a standard optical scan ballot. These devices are also LESS EXPENSIVE than the touch screen machines."
Your reading of HAVA is exactly spot on. The Diebold TSx does not meet the requirements you mention and that is why I have challenged the state's certification of those machines in a formal HAVA complaint. You are, however, incorrect in saying that these devices are less expensive. If you are talking about Vote-PAD then you are correct. If you are talking about AutoMARK you are incorrect. A DRE (TSx) costs between $3,000 and 3,500. The AutoMark $4,500 or more.
Also it is incorrect to assume that the AutoMark can be used with Diebold ballots. It cannot be used that way because the AutoMark has not been certified to be used with those ballots and Diebold refuses to allow their ballot programming to be put on AutoMark machines.
Some California counties are using the AutoMark with Diebold op-scans but in order to do it they also purchase ES&S ballot programming and the voters vote on an ES&S ballot. That ballot is then hand-duplicated onto a Diebold ballot which is then read by the Diebold op-scan.
I stand by my previous comments about this being all about voter suppression and not about a voting system. It is the RNC that is pushing voter ID which is to suppress the vote. Voter ID is a non-issue when there is vote-by-mail.
Posted by: Dem Voter on May 22, 2006 11:48 AMThe "duplicated ballots" issue accouts for by far the most of the problems you quantify. You measure it on a "per ballot" basis, not a "per issue" basis, whereas I claim that the latter is more appropriate. You can see this in two ways: (1) As you increase or decrease the number of issues on a ballot, the "per ballot" number of these problems will scale with it. Most of the other problems will not. (2) What you ultimately want to quantify is how likely we are to make a measurement error when we ask the voters to decide an issue. How many error we make on other issues is not relevent.
My second quibble is easier to explain. When you add the problems, you appear to assume that the percentages can just be summed. That is not true, not even if they sort independently.
If you believe in the importance of ballots reflecting voter intent then you will oppose county-wide vote-by-mail.
Stefan is correct. He was referring to the error-prone system of mail voting, not just election office errors. When a person does not mark his ballot properly that is an error on the part of the voter. If that happens at the polls and the ballot is rejected by the poll-site tabulating equipment then the person is given another chance. That can’t happen with mail ballots because of ballot secrecy.
By statute, every single mail ballot is hand inspected before being tabulated. Ballots are only to be “duplicated” (interpreted) if “the intent of the voter's marks on the ballot is clear and the electronic voting equipment might not otherwise properly tally the ballot to reflect the intent of the voter”. Despite this requirement, if the election workers are unable to discern voter intent then they send the ballots to the canvassing board who then decide what the voter meant, sometimes by a 2 to 1 vote. They have no consistent standards in most of the counties. You need to observe them in action to see how ridiculous some of the decisions are.
"I stand by my previous comments about this being all about voter suppression and not about a voting system. It is the RNC that is pushing voter ID which is to suppress the vote. Voter ID is a non-issue when there is vote-by-mail."
It's easy to stand by your previous comments; it must be much more difficult to provide PROOF or EVIDENCE of your previous comments, because you haven't.
You've many statistics about poll-vote tabulation machines. Bully for you. No matter how inaccurate they may be, they're still MORE accurate than absentee ballots.
"It is the RNC that is pushing voter ID which is to suppress the vote."
Suppress what votes? Illegal votes? Yes, that would be correct. Do you have any evidence that Voter ID suppresses the casting of legal ballots? I'll bet you don't, because none exists. It doesn't, it's a myth, and you're perpetuating fiction.
Furthermore, what evidence do you have that the RNC is suppressing ANY votes whatsoever? Let's look at 2004 - I GUARANTEE you that I can provide more news items about DEMOCRATS illegally supressing voting around the country than you can provide of Republicans doing the same thing.
Voter ID is not a non-issue when voting by mail. It becomes an EVEN BIGGER issue. Anyone with half a brain knows this. It's a 'non-issue' TO YOU, because the ID of the voter is no longer checked at all and they could be illegal.
All-mail voting increases mistakes, costs, fraud, and disenfranchisement. And you've provided NO PROOF WHATSOEVER of the opposite.
Married women voters in Arizona were surprised when they went to register for their voter ID that they had to provide a marriage license to prove their maiden name for proof of citizenship. The courts found against voter ID in Georgia and they will in Arizona. It is repressive, regressive and suppressive. And, of course, we are just going into primary elections in most states that have just instituted voter ID but there were many complaints from Arizona.
"Furthermore, what evidence do you have that the RNC is suppressing ANY votes whatsoever? Let's look at 2004 - I GUARANTEE you that I can provide more news items about DEMOCRATS illegally supressing voting around the country than you can provide of Republicans doing the same thing."
Ah yes! The argument that I was waiting for. How about direct ties between the recently indicted people in New Hampshire who suppressed people's rights to vote by swamping the phones of the state Democrat GOTV office on election night. The group had direct ties to the RNC.
How about "Voter Outreach of America", a GOP funded organization that worked registering voters in Arizona and Nevada. When it was discovered that they were destroying all of the Dem. registrations before filing them, they left Las Vegas without paying their office rent and moved on to Oregon.
In both of these cases there is direct proof that election fraud (not voter fraud) had taken place. In Florida there was talk about ACORN and illegal handling of registrations but that has never been proven.
Thanks for the discussion though. It's been invigorating. Oh, by the way, Snohomish County is now a vote-by-mail county.
Posted by: Dem Voter on May 22, 2006 01:35 PMThe federal court in Georgia found that photo ID was a problem because of how the state implemented it, not because it inherently disenfranchised voters. This is backed up by the recent case in Indiana, where the judge lambasted the Democratic party for the failure to find any problems with the photo ID law there.
Indiana just had their primary, and there were no problems with photo ID. Arizona did have some, yes, but that's to be expected whenever a new system is put in place. Such a problem is an exception, not the rule, however.
Posted by: Jonathan Bechtle on May 22, 2006 02:54 PMOne thing that's not true is that mail voting leads to increased turnout. It does not.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002996955_primary16m.html
http://www.uvm.edu/~vlrs/doc/election_issues.htm
http://www.gppf.org/article.asp?RT=8&p=pub/GovernmentReform/earlyvoting.html
And there are plenty more studies and links. It just makes sense. Take away the urgency of an election day that galvanizes resolve, advertising, etc. and people forget about voting and instead go on with their daily lives. In many cases, a ballot becomes just another piece of mail in the mailbox along with lots of junk mail.
All-Mail balloting is not a good idea, but many are interested in it mostly out of sloth.
As exciting as grand conspiracies on the national level may be to you personally, they are not germane to the topic at hand.
Nor is the concern primarily that "hoards of voters are streaming over the borders just to vote in our elections", as you put it.
While some instances of non-Washington residents casting votes (by mail, please note) here have been documented, the main concern is that mail voting provides many many more opportunities for both vote fraud and mishandling of ballots.
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Transparency and openness are the hallmarks of good government, and mail voting is a giant step backwards on both counts.
Posted by: ewaggin on May 22, 2006 08:08 PMYou mention sloth as if it were a bad thing. What's wrong with saving people's time? For years, people have been doing steadily more business by mail, phone, and the internet for exactly that reason. Most people clearly prefer to vote by mail as well. I think this trend is irreversible. You would be wiser to try to improve it than to try to stop it.
Posted by: Bruce on May 22, 2006 09:40 PMSo please bruce, continue to insist that the problem is no problem, that the errors aren't errors, and that fraud isn't fraud.
We'll revisit that when the Dhimmicrats are losing at the ballot box....
Posted by: alphabet soup on May 23, 2006 10:39 AMBruce - its not a 20 % error - it's 19.04 %, which is way more than enough to influence the outcome of an election and it will only get worse. If the County hijacks all-mail voting and leaves the voters out of the process, its is time to split up this corrupted county - and put your energy toward forming Cascade County.
Posted by: KS on May 23, 2006 07:36 PM