Washblog

thanks for posting this.  

by EWVoters on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 10:46:31 AM PST

I work for the post office, so I see personally the failures that postal delivery can cause.  I would much rather we have paper ballots counted by hand, paired with a holiday for the voters themselves and free public transit on voting day.  If we made those changes, we wouldn't need to accept a 1-5% failure rate like you get with VBM.

by Tahoma Activist on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 02:23:29 PM PST

   There where a bunch of ballots in Portland that were flatass lost.
   That year, they had many "drop off" locations. People(vermin) put up fake collection boxes for the drive bys, and just tossed the ballots. As far as I know, no one was ever caught.

Dave Gibney Pullman

by gibney on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 06:45:56 PM PST

Can you just see it:  The husband of a conservative Christian household taking all the families ballots and filling them out, basically TELLING them how they HAVE to vote?

There's WAY to much room for exploitation and far too little privacy in the vote by mail system.

Instead, we should have 100% paper ballots, hand counted in a large open area with national standards.

by Pen on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 07:49:15 PM PST

VBM saves money -- the money that has been stolen by special interests for their own venal gain -- and to impoverish the public and civic infrastructure and keep the poor and working class so intent on simply making ends meet that they don't pay civic attention.

I see this in an intensely political, populist light.

VBM separates voters from democracy.  It interposes efficiency and bureaucracy between the voter and his community and his vote.   It's sterile.  It takes control from the voters and gives it to the state.  It breaks the chain of accountability and security.   And Pen is right -- it gives the tools to religious disciplinarians and churches to vote for the people under their power -- all for the greater glory of God.  It gives partisan volunteers the tools to get institutionalized vulnerable seniors to vote for particular candidates.  

I've watched research on a number of public questions and issues unfold over the years.  The effectiveness of sex education versus abstinence advocacy is a great example of how long it takes for research to inform public opinion and policy.   For the first 5 years or so it was genuinely difficult to untangle the meanings of what our research told us about the efficacy of sex education vs abstinence ed.  Now we know that abstinence education doesn't work at all -- and that it actually backfires to the extent that we apply it rigorously.  Abstinence vows have a paradoxical effect of resulting in more teenage sex.  Accurate sex education has a moderate measurable positive impact.  And, last I looked, the thing that works best of all -- besides protecting the economic welfare of women of childbearing age -- is training students in assertiveness, giving them the tools to say no or to insist on protection -- both girls and boys.  When you give people the tools to discover and defend their own truth, then natural intelligence  prevails.

It's taken a long time for this to sort itself out -- and policy and public opinion still do not reflect our new understandings.

VBM research appears to be following a similar path.  Research seems to show conflicting results.  But the research is maturing.  More and more we see that the supposed "bump" in voter turnout with VBM is temporary.  More and more we see the security holes in VBM.  

Interesting to me now is the parallel in my mind between sex and voting....  I know, it's a little bit of a stretch... But here goes.  As a young adult I experienced and witnessed others experiencing belittling and coercion around sex that shamed and pressured them -- children, really, to have sex or have it unprotected.  That's where bad sexual decisions happen -- when people don't have the personal tools and the space and time to reach their own truth and to defend it.  

I see this with voting.  The force of the political opinions I come across out there "in the field" when I talk with people is so strong, I can feel it physically sometimes, right in my gut, as I'm standing there in someone's driveway.  Peope have this proprietary feeling about the political direction of their families -- and they will enforce it.  People find themselves in families and communities that see political issues in a certain ways -- and it is incredibly difficult to free the mind from this tyranny.  First, you have to even know you can free your mind.  I lived in terror of hell most of my childhood and I can tell you that this is a logic-defeating terror.  It blocks the mind from even considering that there may be other truth out there.  

Sitting down together at the kitchen table to vote in a partriarchal household, in a fundamentalist religious patriarchal household -- or with groups in your mega-church, etc.  -- You can tell me this is not happening?  I know it's happening. I know that people go into nursing homes and "help" the residents there vote one way or the other.  I was told once by someone that she did this.  She was proud of it!

Community voting -- secret voting and public counting -- this is a core part of our infrastructure that we should be funding fully.  There should be no miserliness about providing enough polling places, enough privacy, enough ballots, enough people to count the vote, etc.  We should not retreat from this.  Is there a hybrid way to do it, given new technologies?  Of course.   But the core function of offering a community place to cast a paper ballot, I don't see why we have to give that up.  

by noemie maxwell on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 10:29:21 AM PST

This is in the sidebar right below this post:

http://www.washblog.com/story/2006/11/7/92355/3031

It's on Washblog, it must be true!

by m3047 on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 02:26:17 PM PST

I'm surprised at the attacks against vote-by-mail.  Really.  Let me tell you a story:

Grays Harbor County is recently an all vote-by-mail county.  There were three main reasons for doing this:  (1)  Over 60% of the county was already on permenant absentee-voter status;  (2)  It saves the county almost 50% of the cost of running each election--very important in these days of tight budgets, especially in small, rural counties;  and (3) It's an approved voting system under HAVA that still maintains a permanent paper trail for hand counts, if needed.

Well, Grays Harbor is solidly Democratic - all county positions and all 9 state legislative positions (well....not really because we have Tim Sheldon, but close enough).

When a public hearing was held by the County Commissioners (all Democrats) about going all vote-by-mail (as recommended by the Democratic Auditor), the only people who opposed going all vote-by-mail were 9 local Republicans led by the "very clearly insane by anyone who has met her" Republican Party chair.

Their arguments were the same as those in this thread.  Yet, when asked if they voted at the polls or were on permanent absentee-ballot status, they were ALL, all 9, already voting permanent absentee.  Seems they wanted the convenience of voting at home but wanted to deny it to others.  Why?  

I don't know.  I don't have any real answers to the concerns.  I think there is good/bad in any kind of system.  I just find it hysterical that so many here are in agreement with the whacko, kool-aid drinking Republicans led by the insane Repug Chair.  It seems quite bizarre to me.

by funkycamper on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 07:25:59 PM PST

--how Oregon deals with duplication of ballots that are rejected by machines?  Publicly available lists of people whose ballots have been received and whose signatures match solves the problem of ballots getting lost or unfairly rejected, but once allowed into the system, are all actually counted?

Here, we have a very transparent and well-documented system for duplication of machine unreadable ballots, but it is extremely expensive and time-consuming for poll workers.  I watched the process in 2005 at the duplication station of last resort, where ballots of the right style had to be printed individually and manually logged in.  What was astonishing to me was how many of the ballots needing duplication had no readily visible reason why they should have been rejected in the first place.  How do they handle this problem in Oregon?  Nobody seems willing to say.

A big problem with mailing ballots is that you fold them, store them for unknown amounts of time under unknown conditions of temperature and humidity, and then <SCRUNCH!> they get pressed through a cancelling machine, possibly transferring ink from your marks to places on the ballot where they shouldn't be.

Also, central tabulation is marginally less accurate than poll tabulation for optical scanning--for the same purely mechanical reason that your computer printer occasionally picks up an extra sheet of paper.  (It was certainly reassuring in 2004 that the hand count added votes to the totals of all three gubernatorial candidates--exactly the expected direction of error.)  At polling places, people can self-correct rejected ballots.

I had a college roommate who worked in a bottling plant one summer who noticed that she pulled far more bottles of light-colored sodas off the line  for contamination than dark-colored sodas.  She never drank dark-colored sodas again.  After my 2005 experience, I always drop my ballot off at the polling station, and think it would be really good to add an option of self-tabulation for absentee voters.  That would preserve the advantage that absentee voting has in saving time for voters, and add the self-checking option that poll voters have.

by eridani on Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 01:23:48 AM PST

I just finished Avi Rubin's book "Brave New Ballot". Great book. He talks about the insecurity of computerized voting. In the book, he makes an incidental remark that mail balloting is also insecure.

Avi's got a blog. His recent entry Absentee is not the answer states some of the reasons he opposes expanded mail balloting. It's worth noting that most election integrity activists and experts oppose forced mail voting.

(I try not to pick fights with the activists who do support forced mail voting. We're all working towards the same goal, even if we disagree on the dteails. Also, I need to gather more data to better make my case.)

by zappini on Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 03:30:29 PM PST

The transparency of Vote by Mail eliminates virtually all fraud

Where's the proof?

Vote by Mail eliminates poll problems--there are no long lines, polls to open late or even confusion about where to vote.

Shooting voters would accomplish the same thing.

Where's the proof?

Vote by Mail eliminates voter roll issues and the need for provisional ballots--ballots are mailed only to registered voters at their official address. Those who do not receive a ballot have ample time to resolve the issue with election officials.

Damnable, baldfaced LIES!

Vote by Mail virtually eliminates voter fraud--no vote is processed or counted until a trained election official is satisfied that the signature on the ballot matches the signature on the voter's registration card.

Trained? Accurate?

Where's the proof?

Vote by Mail reduces the risk of voter intimidation--a 2003 study of Oregon voters showed that groups--like the elderly--who are most vulnerable to coercion prefer Vote by Mail.

The people most vulnerable to coercion choose the form of voting which makes them easiest to coerce.

An idiotic lie!

Vote by Mail creates a paper trail.

Unless they get lost...

Another (almost clever) LIE!

Vote by Mail increases voter turnout

LIE!

Vote by Mail encourages educated voters

Classist... and besides

Where's the proof?

Vote by Mail saves taxpayer dollars

A bald-faced lie!

by m3047 on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 01:09:52 PM PST

[This is targeted at Belltowners lies. So remember that. For another example, try http://www.washblog.com/story/2006/7/31/13429/7346 - FWM]

Over 60% of mail-in ballots are lost in some elections. They are never returned. All ballots at polling places, including ballots not issued, are returned to King County Elections.

When Belltowner makes a mistake, we decide it how we want to. The canvassing boards are composed of people like me, not Belltowner. If he made a mistake at the polls, the scanner would reject it most likely. Then he'd be able to get another ballot and correct it to his liking. Of course we don't tell Belltowner about this; we like the fact that he thinks he is infallible, it works well for us.

Unopposed judges get 100% of the vote 100% of mail-in ballots are received and processed correctly! Of course, they do, because that's the way we publish the results! If you don't vote those races or your ballot isn't received and processed correctly that is what we call voter intent. That's what Belltowner wants us to do.

by m3047 on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 10:23:22 AM PST