Vote By Mail

The election system in the United States is broken. With questions about the safety of electronic voting machines, too few numbers of voting machines and general questions of fraud in Ohio and Florida something needs to be done. A few weeks ago I had a post on Oregon's Vote By Mail. (I can't give you a link because about 3 weeks of history is missing from Blogger) Oregon's secretary of state, Bill Bradbury has a commentary in today's Washington Post where he discusses Oregon's success with Vote By Mail.

While many states were embroiled in fights over touch-screen voting machines and provisional ballots and struggling to find enough people to staff polling places, Oregon once again quietly conducted a presidential election with record turnout and little strife.

Oregon's vote-by-mail system has proved reliable and popular. Critics said that vote-by-mail is prone to fraud. But signature verification of every voter before a ballot is counted is an effective safeguard against fraud.

Vote By Mail has increased voter participation is Oregon and it has many other advantages.

Vote-by-mail provides an automatic paper trail. Every vote-by-mail ballot is read by reliable optical scan machines, and the paper is available should a hand recount become necessary. Mailed ballots are not forwarded by the post office, and the constant updating of voter rolls provided by returned ballots allows Oregon to have accurate and updated voter rolls without the risk of partisan purges.

Without polling places, vote-by-mail eliminates the expensive and time-consuming recruitment and training of poll workers. As a result, the cost of a vote-by-mail election is nearly 30 percent less than the cost of a polling place election.

Centralized supervision and control of ballot processing by elections officials in county elections offices, instead of dispersed polling places, maintains uniformity and strict compliance with law throughout the state.

There was a great deal of resistance to voting without poll from the politicians, the impact of any last minute mud slinging is greatly reduced. I'm sure that the makers of touch screen voting machines will put up a hell of a fight as will partisan hacks in charge of voting in some states. In Oregon it has been a winner, increased voter turnout, less cost and more control of the process reducing the potential for fraud. Something for all the other states to think about.