Vote-by-Mail: The Real Winner Is Democracy by Oregon SOS Bradbury

[Amaryllis]

The article was written by Oregon SOS Bill Bradbury, who is very aware of election fraud issues and has done a great job in Oregon to ensure we have fair elections.

Vote-by-Mail: The Real Winner Is Democracy
washingtonpost.com
By Bill Bradbury

Saturday, January 1, 2005; Page A23

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.

Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate contended that vote-by-mail would suppress voter participation. But record numbers of Oregonians registered to vote, and almost 87 percent of them cast ballots.

Critics argued that vote-by-mail eliminates the communal experience of voting on Election Day. But community activities promoting voting were readily available to Oregonians on Election Day and in the days leading up to it. With two weeks to conduct public education and get-out-the-vote efforts, Oregonians were surrounded by civic engagement reminders. Oregonians have also started a new communal experience: voting at home, showing their children the ballot and talking to them about how important it is to vote.

(see link for rest of article which goes on to describe other benefits of vote by mail, but I did post the conclusion here)

The answer to the nation's voting anxiety is not a national standard that imposes new rules on an outdated system of polling places. The answer is a low-tech, low-cost, reliable and convenient system that makes it easier to vote and easier to count votes. The answer is vote-by-mail.

The writer is Oregon's secretary of state.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40032-2004Dec31?language=printer

[sepia_steel]

1. We should do this EVERYWHERE.

We just have to be careful of makers of counting machines, corrupt officials, etc... but this take away the paperless advantage handily, and proves that everyone address is still current, etc. Why don't we do this everywhere? No lines, no missing work, no intimidation...

[Amaryllis]

3. Yes! Forget passing elaborate laws to safeguard e-voting. Just use paper!

Duh.

And this system makes voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression practically non-existent. No waiting in line, no problems with not enough machines, no problems with unequal distribution of machines,no problems with people going to the wrong polling places, and partisan SOSs changing the polling places on them...

No problems with machine malfunctions, or machines registering Kerry votes for Bush...

Hmmm...far less chance to rig elections. Isn't this a GOOD thing?

[Carolab]

6. This is the model DEAN recommends

he says we need to pass referenda to get it done

[Be Brave]

2. I think this is a good system.

I'd also like to point out that the Oregon exit poll, which was commissioned to the University of Oregon and performed via telephone, agreed well with the actual vote results.

[illflem]

4. Vote by mail is great as long as you can trust the post office

Back in the days when it was all paper ballots most tampering went on in-between the polls and the counting place.

[Straight Shooter]

5. We can also drop off our ballots at City Hall

I just walked downtown and dropped my "secret envelope" into the ballot box. I don't trust the U.S. Post Office either.

As an Oregon citizen, I actually feel very confident that my vote was counted, and that it was counted accurately. It's hard to imagine what I'd be going through if I lived in Ohio x(

[Amaryllis]

7. We can also deliver the ballot to our BOE any time between when the

ballots are sent and Nov. 2. We have 18 days. We can also drop them into locked boxes at our branch libraries. We can call our BOE and see if they have received our ballots. Lots of us sent in or dropped off our ballots early this year, so we had a lot of days before Nov. 2 to call BOE and see if they had been received.

Any system is open to fraud, but this eliminates a lot of the kinds of fraud we saw in other states this year and in 2000 and 2002.

[PennyMan]

8. Send Registered Mail They Have To Sign For It You Will Get The Card Back

[shraby]

9. What is the method of counting

the ballots after they have been sent in? How can you be sure your ballot is counted?

[Amaryllis]

10. We are checking this out. It's a form of optical scan. Our SOS is up

on fraud issues and has worked hard to make our system as safe as possible so it's probably safe, but after this year we are assuming nothing so one of our election activists computer experts is in the process of determining exactly what kind of optiscan is used.

I'm sure there are others who know but different groups working on this issue are finding each other and joining forces. The groups I am working with are in the process of checking. Any other Oregonians already know?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. This is my only issue with OR....

The machines counting the votes. I would like to see an hand audit done for every election if we continue to use the machines.

I felt good about voting here. I got my ballot in the mail, I sat down at the computer, had the ballot measure and candidate booklets, and I spent 2-3 hours on it. I felt really informed and sure that I had enough info to make up my own mind on every issue. Harder to do at a voting booth.

[Left Brain]

14. I second that

and I live in Oregon.

[dano5050]

12. Just as bad as touch screen

Come on people. The vote-by-mail system in Oregon is only as good as your opinion of the candidate that got elected.

Imagine: 4 years hence. Republicans are in charge. You vote by mail. Some republican you dislike becomes elected. How sure are you that your vote was counted correctly?

The answer? Not at all.

The only system that will work for us long term is one that will guarantee that each vote was counted, and that each vote *continues* to count in the overall total.

In my opinion there is no system that guarantees this today, neither paper or electronic.

Do you want a truly honest election process? Then you need a number of things:

1- Open and honest election officials that are sworn to independence, not political appointees, and have a proven & historic lack of affiliation w/ any party.

2- A voting process that guarantees the same quality of result regardless of whether you vote in person, provisionally or by absentee. Indeed, the ideal process will work via the Internet.

3- A voting process which is validated throughout its course by 3rd parties in the media, academia, and by any interested third party through widespread, continuous access to all data produced as a result of the vote. Consistency of results across all monitoring bodies should be the yardstick by which success is measured.

4- A voting process which uses a variety of different means, including exit polls, to verify the results achieved. Any additional means should be completely open to public scrutiny-- in addition, any data derived from these sources should be public domain.

5- A policy to only hire non-partisan organisations for any necessary products or services associated with collecting the vote. Those non-partisan organizations cannot use any proprietary technology in that process. They may not have ANY contact with machines or processes after the sale, especially prior, during or immediately after the vote. All technical service should be performed by trained persons working for state or local governments.

6- All decisions regarding capacity planning for the election in terms of machines, paper ballots or other concerns should be open to public scrutiny and should factor at least 50% overage into their calculations to absolutely ensure fair play.

7- The state should have a registration budget available to it to specifically target those districts with low percentage overall voter registration and motivate more citizens to participate... with a goal of 100% overall participation.

8- The encouragement of other organizations (media, educational, private groups) to share responsibility in terms of watching the vote and stewarding relevant data.

9- The use of cryptographic techniques, checksum techniques and other technologies to allow any voter to both maintain the privacy of their vote, while at the same time being able to prove during and after the vote that their choice was and continues to be counted towards the overall result.

10- The use of large, publicly viewable displays in each polling precinct to display total number of votes, total number of registered voters, time and official closing time of the precinct. The use of random, rotating observers at each precinct to monitor, record and verify the conditions and statistics at each location, and to participate in the process of refining the process to improve the results after each election.

11- Voting officials which are measured on: Total % of voters voting. Accuracy of official vote to independently measured reflections of the actual vote.


etc. etc.

In other words, when you mail off your vote to some central place where a bunch of people count all the votes... what have you got?

NOTHING!!!!

Use your heads folks.... this is not a simple problem, and it takes a combination of old and new thinking to come up with a good long term solution.

Dan

[jwmealy]

18. There's "Nada" and "Nada"!

A lot of your points are great. However, there's a huge difference between what you've "got" at the end of the day in Oregon, than, for example, what you've got in Delaware.

In Oregon, you've got a huge stack of ballots that can be recounted. That's a far cry from NADA. If there is suspicion of fraud, there can be a physical recount. So the most crucial issue is one of custody. Ballots should remain in the custody of bi- or multi-partisan teams of election officials, from the moment of casting/submission until the certification of the vote.

In Delaware, on the other hand, you've got 3500 or so memory cartridges, no paper trail of any kind at any stage, no way of even reconstructing the order of votes cast on any one machine. Now, THAT's a whole lot of NADA.

jwmealy

www.selftest.net/redshift.htm

[zimba]

13. It sure makes voting as easy as it can be.

I took plenty of time at my casa filling it out, making sure everything was right etc. Then drove down the street to the library, picked up a book, dropped off my vote, got a pizza and went home. Gotta love Oregon.

[Pithy Cherub]

15. The Oregon Model enfranchises everyone.

This is a model that allows increased participation in democracy!

[JoMama49]

16. I've been saying we should use the Oregonian model since

election day '04!! Why fix something that's not broken? Why re-invent the wheel? We already have a great system that works fine, and Oregon has it! And, as long as the counters are non-partisan, it should work just as well everywhere as in Oregon.

We really need to push for this nationally!!! Let's start this as a movement!

[SharonRB]

17. I've been advocating this for weeks

Congress should do a study and take a look at this. It sounds like the most fraud-proof way to go and the least expensive. Of course, we know that the Repuke majority in Congress doesn't want a fraud-proof way to vote.