House Panel Approves Mail Balloting for All Federal Elections

[kpete]

House Panel Approves Mail Balloting for All Federal Elections
By Joanna Anderson, CQ Staff

Legislation that would allow all eligible Americans to vote by mail in presidential and congressional elections was approved Wednesday by a House committee, along with a handful of other measures on voting and election practices.

By a 4-2 party-line vote, the Committee on House Administration approved a bill (HR 1604) that would authorize mail balloting in all federal elections.

The legislation would first take effect for the 2012 elections.

The measure generally would prohibit states from imposing special conditions or requirements on eligibility to vote by mail except in regard to deadlines for requesting and returning the ballot.

But the committee by voice vote adopted an amendment by Kevin McCarthy , R-Calif., that would allow states to require that a voter’s signature be on file before a mail ballot is issued, and that the signature on a returned ballot match the one on record before the vote is counted. Bill sponsor Susan A. Davis , D-Calif., voiced support for the proposal.

more:

[robinlynne]

1. and of course the signatures are matched by equipment made by.............

Diebold. The signature match settings have high, low and medium settings.
In other words if you want the signatures to match you set it on low. If you want any little difference to mean a rejection of the ballot, you set it on high.

[diva77]

2. Remember all those ballots that weren't mailed out in time by the private contractors?!?!?

what a disaster

[Land Shark]

3. Forced vote-by-mail represents Complete Privatization of elections, and even Postal Inspectors

say to NEVER send cash through the mail (if you care about your cash) since less than 1 in 10 thefts is reported, quite often, by insider postal workers. It applies with even greater force never to send a ballot through the mail if you care about your ballot. It also gives a lot more time to play with the ballots, sell advance results (even if no fraud per se is occurring) and a host of chain of custody and other issues. on edit, most direct link is http://novbm.wordpress.com/why-not-vbm/

Just say no to Forced Vote by Mail

[Wilms]

4. This schema isn't calling for "Forced Vote by Mail".

But that underscores a problem.

Willingly, and often only for the sake of convenience, people choose to vote by mail. In CA it's @50%.

It probably enhances turnout. And it probably more benefits Dems. But at a significant cost.

Few understand.