Massachusetts should seriously consider vote-by-mail as a way to drive up turnout. Read this story from the WaPo:
This month, as controversies emerged in other parts of the country over polling place problems and malfunctioning touch-screen machines, we here in Oregon prepared to swear in a new crop of elected officials with nary a question about the legitimacy of the count or the functioning of our electoral process. We accomplished this with a turnout on Nov. 7 that was, once again, among the highest in the nation. How? With Vote by Mail.
One episode that highlights its success occurred in Tillamook County, where 13 inches of rain on Election Day sent many citizens scrambling to the safety of shelters under a declared state of emergency. Despite the fact that many roads were impassable and parts of the county were inaccessible — conditions that would have crippled turnout in a state that relied on conventional polling places — 70 percent of the voters cast ballots. Only voting by mail could have led to this outcome
hat tip to Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars
I remember…and bear with me, as the waning days of the campaign were fast and furious…that we passed the ability to vote absentee WITHOUT having to prove why you wanted to, and if it fit in the parameters of current allowability. My own town clerk, even though she knew I would be off-Cape all day, asked if I wouldn’t like to vote at 7 am on my way out of town (I told her, no, it was shaping up as a busy day as it was!). Now, I THINK, I can just make the request timely and vote absentee – and by mail.
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Is this accurate? Or was it killed?
Unfortunately, an ill-advised constitutional amendment requires a reason to vote absentee (i.e., you have to explain why you CAN’T physically get to the polls). The ConCon successfully advanced an amendment that would allow for no-excuse absentee voting (which is basically voting by mail), so they’ll have to vote on it again next session, and then it goes to the 2008 ballot.
I KNEW it was some vote. Oh, well, we CAN have it by ’08 if they hold a ConCon early on in the Session!
Peter, I don’t think we can have it by 2008. If it gets approved for the second time in the Session, it would go to the voters for approval in 2008.
They love it in Oregon — American Prospect has a good survey of the practice here.
Statewide vote-by-mail is a terrible idea. The manipulation of absentee ballots is the most frequent form of voter fraud.
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The reason we encourage voters to visit a polling place and cast their vote in a secure, discrete manner is primarily so votes cannot be bought. As soon as you can vote from home, someone else, either with cash in their hand or a gun to your back, can persuade you to vote a particular way. Malicious individuals can also falsify other voters absentee ballot applications.
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Our current system, to its credit, intentionally creates friction in the absentee voter process to limit those who choose that route. And when a particular jurisdiction shows an abnormally high number of absentee ballot requests, federal officials rightly investigate for potential voter fraud.
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If we want to make voting easier, let’s start with measures that don’t weaken the right to a private vote, like making Election Day a holiday or allowing voting over a weekend. If we make absentee voting the norm, absentee voter fraud becomes virtually undetectable.
The UK implemented nation-wide vote-by-mail and suffered from serious voter fraud as a result. I don’t know of any specific problems in Oregon yet. But I still have concerns for two main reasons.
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1. The vast majority of voters still vote at a polling place. If more voters began voting by mail, I think Republicans would switch their voter intimidation tactics away from the polling place to postal voting, which I believe is more vulnerable.
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2) I think the potential for silent fraud — fraud that goes undetected — is greater with postal voting. How would we ever detect that person A paid person B to vote a particular way?
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That said, I think I should have tempered my initial reaction to Joel’s post a bit. I am not completely closing the door to the option, but I do have very serious concerns about the fraud issue.
Check out the comment down the screen.
…I truly liked the ability of voting by mail. I for one enjoy going to the actual voting booth but for many it is too dificult to get to polls on election day.
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Now, there are problems of course. I remember hearing stories about churches that encouraged people to bring their ballots with them on Sunday, now I don’t know if this was ever proven but it is not difficult to imagine this happening in a church or any other type of organization.
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I do however feel that is more important to encourage and make voting as accessible as possible.
Here are a few drawbacks to carefully consider when discussing mandatory vote-by-mail:
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1. As Greg alraedy mentioned, there is huge potential for fraud (buy my ballot on eBay!) and intimidation (daddy fills out the ballots for the whole quivering household).
2. Write-in campaigns will be nearly impossible.
3. No sense of community, no excitment of the day, no interaction with candidates, and no nifty little “I VOTED!” stickers because these things are only possible at the polls.
4. GOTV and other campaign activities will be harder to time, less efficient and more drawn out because many voters will mail in ballots up to several weeks before election day (mailing deadline). We will no longer be able to focus all of our efforts on one single, drop-dead date.
so I’d sacrifice the sense of community if it got more citizens to vote
All citizens have the opportunity to do so, and do when circumstances motivate them. Otherwise, they don’t give a fig. So why is it so important that these people vote?
Modern life puts some severe crimps on many people’s lives, so I don’t agree so easily that all citizens have the opportunity to do so. As a parent with a toddler, many times I have had to abandon my list of tasks for the day, and I’m lucky enough to have a wife to help me. I can easily imagine that single parents would have too tough a time dealing with childcare & a job to make time for voting. I think it’s very important that the people in our Commonwealth who are under great pressures of time & money get their say, same as the more comfortable.
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Don’t assume that because someone missed something it was because they didn’t care. Hmmm, you’re a Dad–have you ever forgotten to do something for a family member? Did that mean you don’t care about the family member?
joel, doesn’t the current system of absentee voting provide a remedy for kid-hectic situations such as yours? i’m not sure across the board mail voting is necessary to alleviate the sorts of problems you’re talking about. the absentee system should be enough. if it isn’t, how does it need to be changed to make it work for people in your situation?
by election officials, if you think you’ll be out of town, or medically inconvenienced (e.g. you have drag around an O2 tank), you can get an absentee ballot ahead of time.
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But if you do think you’ll be in town, and then something happens to you on Tuesday and you can’t go to the polls, you’re out of luck. Two Somerville friends missed the primary this year because an out-of-state family member died suddenly, a few days before the primary. They had expected to be in town, and looked forward to voting. If they had been mailed a ballot a few weeks before, they could have voted on the plane and mailed it when they landed.
If someone wants to vote, and cannot because of the demands of parenthood or work– they can get an absentee ballot now, unless I’m mistaken.
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But your earlier post wasn’t advocating for absentee ballots because some people might need them. Your point was that all-mail ballots are good because “higher turnout is better.”
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Assuming that it is true that all mail ballots increase turnout, why is this a good thing?
Some demographics have lower turnout: the younger voters, the poor, some ethnic groups. It’s typical that government doesn’t prioritize the needs of these non-voters (e.g. we went a long time without a raise in the minimum wage, and the government has done little to provide health insurance for poor people and young people) as it does the higher-turnout demographics (the elderly, for instance, got a medicare Rx benefit because politicians from both parties wanted to do something for that group).
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I’m committed to the principle that a government should respect and serve all the people of the Commonwealth, and raising turnout will bring pressure on politicians to do so.
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Higher turnout will encourage the government to respond to the people it has been forgetting.
1. GOTV is actually easier with absentee… heck, 70% of the people in the only state that has 100% mail-in ballots vote, which is the very definition of “getting out the vote.” A far more devious reason, though: democrats all around the country focus on early voting as our bread and butter.
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2. GOTV in the traditional sense, while crucial to elections, isn’t really more democratic – which is ultimately what we want, right? What GOTV machines do is they get smaller segments of society to drive policy because they’re the ones who vote. What are the results? Crazy religious zealots and corpratist hacks have been controlling this country for the better part of 15 years. If almost everyone voted, they wouldn’t have nearly as much power.
Ryepower12, I actually meant persuasion calls. i sometimes used the term GOTV as a catch-all, but that is obviously not a wise thing in this context. sorry for the confusion. i think i corrected my termonology farther down the thread, for what it’s worth.
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as for true GOTV, we can test the effect of all-mail voting on it in WA next election cycle. WA is transitioning to an all mail system. only a few counties were still voting at traditional polls last month. i haven’t seen any final numbers on 11/06 turnout. the rationale for switching was, not surprising, to hopefully improve voter participation, and to reduce costs.
According to Bill Bradbury:
It strikes me that checking the voter signature is a very good way to prevent fraud. This decompression of the voting window also would give election workers time to check if dead people are voting.
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And at the end of the article, Bradbury points out that Tuesdays were picked for election day to make it easier for farmers to vote. Tuesdays were the day farmers (the majority of the population then) brought their harvest to town.
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Tuesdays not convenient now.
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I’m not sure vote-by-mail makes GOTV difficult. With the wider window for voting, it decompresses GOTV that gets crammed into the weekend before election day.
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By the way, the lower costs of vote-by-mail might be really desirable given how tight the state budget is.
well, i am!
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i do hope that OR really did suffer no fraud, but it is easy to sign the ballot before you sell it or force the person you’re intimidating to sign it. so i’m not sure anything was proven by OR’s claims. i dont know that it’s possible to ever really know, unless people who were intimidated step forward, or ballot sellers who feel guilty fess up.
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as for GOTV, persuasion calls, etc i can speak from experience that it quickly becomes a waste of time to call voters any time after the blank ballots have been mailed out to voters. a large proportion will have already sent them back, or will say they did. either way, it is very hard to engage them in any meaningful way. so as far as i’m concerned, all-mail-voting really reduces the importance and effectiveness of the telephone. at least late in the campaign. if you’re not working on a campaign, this may not bother you. if you’ve ever worked on a campaign, it’ll drive you nuts.
In a state where anyone can vote absentee for any reason, absentee voting gives a great advantage to whichever party can afford a massive mailing program. The way Republicans in Florida do it, is send every single Republican registered voter a mailing encouraging them to vote absentee. The mailing includes a tear-off, pre-printed postcard addressed to the SOE requesting an absentee ballot. The voter just drops it in the mail and gets an absentee ballot. The party then checks with the SOE to see who has gotten absentee ballots and calls them to see if they’ve voted yet. If everything is done efficiently, it allows the party to count a good percentage of their vote ahead of election day, so there’s a bit less work to do once election day rolls around. In 2004, one of the things that helped Republicans was having an efficient absentee ballot request program in place that allowed them to get their ballots ahead of the Democrats, who were collecting absentee ballot requests as they canvassed during late August through October. Many Democrats ended up not getting their ballots in time to vote them. In 2006 the advantage seemed to be waning, though, as many Democrats requested their absentee ballots earlier.
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Another way to deal with the something-comes-up-on-election day problem is Early Voting–allowing people to vote in-person at a town hall or library during the two weeks leading up to election day. That has been very popular here–the biggest problem with it in 2004 was that so many people came out that there were lines and a couple of people passed out from the heat (I don’t think you’d have that problem in Massachusetts).
it gives you time to research the choices actually on the ballot–without having to Google it up. I’ve got a good internet connection but many of my neighbors don’t have that, and with a ballot given to them weeks in advance, they would have had a better chance to consider how to vote on issues that didn’t dominate the headlines.
of ballot issues in the mail ahead of time, giving me olenty of pre-poll time to think. doesn;t this happen state-wide? maybe it was just my town?
Hmm…
Encouraging people who had truly made up their minds to vote absentee and avoid possible snowstorms! also, Republicans Abroad sends out absentee ballot requests worldwide.
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With the bonus that if the voter drops dead before election day, the vote still counts!
With the bonus that if the voter drops dead before election day, the vote still counts!
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I’m not sure that this is always the case. When you send in an absentee ballot, you clearly have to indicate who you are on an outer envelope or some such. A well run system wouldn’t open that envelope until election day, but would check a “dead list” against absentees the day before. It wouldn’t be perfect, but I’d think it’d be pretty accurate.
In Switzerland, mail-in voting decreased turnout
See the article from the Freakonomics author:
http://www.freakonom…
I’ve never been there, but I wouldn’t assume that just because something works in Oregon, it would work in Massachusetts, or Florida, or any other place. Oregon is very different, no really old urban centers there, nothing like Boston (or other major cities). Does anyone know anything of the history of electoral hanky-panky in Oregon?
Voting by mail would be very hard to pass through the legislature. The 200 members of the state legislature may be willing to consider small changes: election day registration, maybe early voting, poll worker reform, etc. But they are very unlikely, absent a huge groundswell, to consider a massive overhaul of how our elections work. I think that mandatory voting by mail might elicit a strong, negative reaction from many lawmakers because it would make such a big change.
One of the arguments against making election day a national holiday is that many minimum wage earners would still be required to go into work that day. Private employers would not be required to close their doors, and many of the working poor would likely be given the choice of either being able to buy groceries or voting.
The example of Switzerland that was cited makes specific reference to the social incentive for voting, and makes reference to the fact that turnout was most depressed in small communities. How much social incentive is there to vote in a large city like, Boston or Worcester? How many people in our country go to the polling place for fear of what their neighbors might think of them if they didn’t? The people who stay away from the polls because they have to work would be able to vote because of this measure; these individuals likely face less social pressure to vote than the average American. Robert Putnam has documented the decline of social capital in America in the last third of the previous century. The fact is the social pressure to vote in this country for all people has waned significantly, and those who are in communities where pressure to vote exists will likely continue to vote at the polling place with their peer group.
This measure should mitigate the deterent effect of long lines and understaffed polling places on election day if enough people participate.
On the issue of intimidation could be mitigated by simple structural changes. By allowing people to pick up their absentee ballot and vote at their townhall at the same time, they may be able to escape the figure attempting to steal their vote.
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Vote-by-mail is one of them. Another is to have multi-day elections – giving people three or four days (including at least one day during the weekend) to get to the ballots.
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Same day registration would be a boon. Lowering the age where people vote to 16 would have longterm benefits too, as people who vote when they’re younger tend to vote for the rest of their lives (and we could have mandatory civic classes at all high schools across America in students’ freshmen and sophomore years).
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There are lots of great ideas. We should start trying some of them and seeing which ones seem to work.
If we have mail-in vote, why would we need multi-day? Multi-day town meetings are a disaster.
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I have real reservations about same-day registration – unless accompanied by a SS number, and photo ID, it just seems ripe for fraud. And frankly – how do you feel about somebody not bothering to register, geting all excited by a single TV commercial, and THEN deciding to vote?
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Also – 16 year olds aren’t yet citizens. They do not have adult responsibilites. I have problems with them voting for that reason.
In society, the day you turn 18 you instantly become an adult – legally speaking. That means, these kids go from having no responsibilities to having every responsibility in the matter of a day. It also means they had no reason to pay attention, and now every reason to pay attention – yet were never taught the habit of paying attention.
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One thing I’d like to point out is they are citizens. They day you’re born inside the United States, you’re born an American Citizen. However, since they aren’t yet “adults,” that’s why I suggest having a mandatory civics class in their freshman or sophmore years – so they learn about our Government, its processes, parties and history before they actually make a vote. If we gave students these kinds of classes, many of them would be more equipped to vote than lots of regular voters.
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Finally, so much about what we vote on effects students. In fact, public education is probably the most important thing this government does – at least in terms of services. They deserve to impact the process and have a voice. Leaders in Massachusetts thought so highly of that idea that they’ve put a full-voting student member onto the Massachusetts Board of Education, one of only 9 people on the Board. Legally, there should be a non-voting student member of every Town School Committee in the state, taking part of almost every discussion. Why not reach a bit further and try to instill the importance of civic engagement and researching issues in people when they’re young, instead of just expecting them to “get it” the day they turn 18.
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Mail-in or multi-day, but I don’t see why they should have to be mutually exclusive. If people want to go into an actual ballot (maybe they don’t feel secure ‘dropping off’ a vote or mailing it), they should be able to do so. Town meetings and voting are very different processes, so I don’t think just because town meetings don’t work (where you’re from, at least, I think they work fine in Swampscott), it doesn’t mean multi-day voting couldn’t work. Multi-day voting could just mean that people are welcome to go to City Hall and vote during special hours the weekend before the election.