Mail Ballot Horror Show (XXIV): It's a faith-based initiative
Fox News examines vote-by-mail
Secretary of State Sam Reed is quoted. His support for mail voting seems more rooted in faith than in fact:
Reporter Kim McIntyre: Could this be the new way Americans vote? Reed: I think it does fit the lifestyle of people better in this modern day and age to have the flexibility to vote when you have the time.
Right. Now that more people than ever before have flexible work schedules, it's harder for voters to get to the polls than it used to be.
Reed: And let's face it we need a better informed electorate and this is the number one advantage we have to this system.
This so-called advantage is nonsense and Reed has been touting it for years:
"with mail balloting, [a voter] can "spread the campaign materials across the kitchen table" and make thoughtful, well-reasoned decisions.
A sample ballot would be helpful for organizing one's research, but having the actual ballot at the kitchen table wouldn't add any value over the sample ballot. And this is the number one advantage?
Reed: It is a solid system and it is one that is applied generally. Most people don't believe this, but every signature, in fact, is checked.
1. Sam Reed is an embarassment to this state. What is he thinking? He needs to go. We should primary his ass. Who could take him out in 08?
Posted by: samsucks on November 1, 2006 09:05 PM
2. Sam Reed ALSO said every signature is checked!
Posted by: sgmmac on November 1, 2006 09:40 PM
3. So we need to go back to the dark ages? Just eliminate the Internet to save ID theft, right? Sounds like a similar concept. I agree that with progress comes bugs that need to be worked out, but this is the future. We can try to make it work, or we can kick and scream and talk about the "good ole days".
Posted by: Scott on November 1, 2006 10:10 PM
4. This piece was aired immediately after they had a spot on the Reichert/Burner race... with clips of marcy/Darcy talking down to us... God, Washington State can sure be embarassing...
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskold on November 1, 2006 10:24 PM
5. I voted by mail this year. There is nothing,,, nothing in place that could detect my ballot being misued by a relative. Mail in balloting will be rife with undetectable fraud. Smiling Sam Reed is a horse's ass for sure. He doesn't have a clue about election integrity. Any average citizen can see that.
Posted by: jd on November 1, 2006 11:28 PM
6. All mail voting accomplishes two things. It endangers the integrity of elections, and it reduces the very serious act of voting to something no more important than a bill paying session at the kitchen table. Sam's got to go.
Posted by: katomar on November 1, 2006 11:52 PM
7. Stefan, you are going to loose this battle. Not because of a vast left-wing conspiracy, but because mail-in voting is just too damn convenient. More voters want it; more voters will get it.
Problems of fraud, malfeasence, and corecion with mail-in voting are real, but they will never loom large enough in the minds of voters to outweigh the convenience factor. Given that fact, Stefan, your considerable talents and energies would be better spent devising realistically implementable procedures that could address some of these problems and hounding election offices to make sure they are implemented.
Posted by: David Wright on November 2, 2006 05:45 AM
8. David: How do you know that more voters want mail-in ballots? We used to have a system that gave voters the choice of in-person voting or mail-in and as I recall the majority chose to vote in-person. And if voter turn out is as low or lower with mandatory mail-in, what has been accomplished?
If we sponsored an initiative to go back to the old system, I wonder how it would fare?
9. Elaine: Because every place that allows no-excuse absentee ballots sees more voters sign up for it every year. Because, to satisfy voter requests, more and more places are offering no-excuse absentee ballots. Because, as a the Fox report said, the number of ballots cast by mail nationally has surged from 2% to 20% in a decade. (That's nearly as fast a rate of growth as internet usage grew in the 1990s!)
You don't have to take my word for it; you could sponsor an initiative, air your concerns, and see how it goes. I honestly believe such an initiative would go down in flames. And because I honestly believe that, I hope that Stefan will put his talents and energies into more achievable ways of improving electoral integrtity.
Posted by: David Wright on November 2, 2006 06:37 AM
10. Why would i want to pay 74 cents to vote (2 stamps, right?)
Only the idiots in KC gov't would create a plan that charges a "poll tax" to vote....
11. David: Last I checked, 20% was not a majority. When we still had the choice, most of us chose to vote in person. That choice has been taken away with the explanation that most voters want it. I would strongly disagree that most voters want to mail in their ballot since, when given the choice, most voters were choosing to vote in-person. Just because there is an upward trend in mail-in requests does not mean that eventually everyone would want mail-in.
Posted by: Elaine on November 2, 2006 07:02 AM
12. The answer to the question in #1 is: Bob Williams of EFF. Our voting mess/fraud in this state would be cleared up in no time.
Posted by: Susu on November 2, 2006 07:51 AM
13. Elaine: Sorry, I wasn't being explict about "the initiative" in question. Yes, one might well be able to muster a majority to vote against moving to forced mail-in voting. Unfortunately, you get almost all the potential problems of mail-in voting as soon as you allow mail-in voting on any scale beyond a small, tightly controlled group. To really address those potential problems, you would need to return to allowing absentee voting only with an excuse, and you will never muster a majority for that.
Posted by: David Wright on November 2, 2006 08:33 AM
14. Stefan, your suggestion of each voter receiving a sample ballot in advance and then voting in person at the polls is excellant. My problem with seeing a ballot for the first time at the polling booth is that there are ALWAYS candidates and/or issues on the ballot with whom/which I am not familiar. On the one hand I am concerned about the likelyhood of fraud. On the other, I personally open my ballot when I receive it, then take one to two weeks to research and educate myself on candidates/issues that are unfamiliar to me prior to recording my vote.
I like the ideas of a sample ballot in advance followed by strong ID procedures prior to entering the voting booth.
Posted by: Curtis Mohr on November 2, 2006 08:50 AM
15. Elaine, in King and Pierce county (which had the option of mail or poll voting), over 80% of people in the primary chose to vote by mail. Pretty sure that is a majority. And the 34 mail only counties had 41% turnout compared to 36% for the 5 mail counties.
Righton, so you'd rather pay the 74 cents in gas to drive to a poll sight? If you prefer that, you can drop your mail ballot at a drop box.
16. I travel for work periodically, so we switched to permanent absentee rather than switching back and forth. It took 3 election cycles for my wife to get her name changed with KCE after we got married, I cannot imagine trying to switch back and forth from polls to mail ballots.
Posted by: Palouse on November 2, 2006 09:37 AM
17. Scott: Where can I verify your information? Anything on-line? I would like to find out how current mail-in voting rates compare to previous by-choice voting. And how many people were mail-in before the forced mail-in.
Thanks!
Posted by: Elaine on November 2, 2006 09:39 AM
18. Elaine, go to vote.wa.gov and click on the news link. A short article with primary election statistics is there.
Posted by: Scott on November 2, 2006 09:48 AM
19. Article is herePosted by: Palouse on November 2, 2006 09:58 AM
20. Cast your wooden shoes into the machine all you want Luddites, but I for one am a Republican that prefers the vote-by-mail system. Just because the validation isn't yet perfected, doesn't mean we should chuck this idea. By all means keep hammering away on the smallish problem of fraud and probably bigger issue of errors. Sam's a moderate leader and I aplaud him.
Posted by: Matty on November 2, 2006 10:38 AM
21. I want a purple finger.
Posted by: ljm on November 2, 2006 11:04 AM
22. Thanks for the links! It will take some time to look at trends (I didn't know I should have been keeping track) but a couple of things are apparent. When voters had the choice between mail and in-person polling, 1/3 chose mail. As the county began changing individual precincts to mail only, the number jumped to just over 50%. Now my county is all mail-in, so this election we will be near 100%. Because my county gradually changed to all mail-in, it is still reported as a choice of polling county, with just over half "choosing" to vote by mail. Except the choice was removed for many of the voters.
23. My comment applies to my county of residence only, I should have been a clearer in my post.
Posted by: Elaine on November 2, 2006 11:53 AM
24. The fact that the majority of the votes were cast by mail does not imply that the majority of voters cast their votes by mail.
Posted by: supercat on November 3, 2006 04:42 PM