Thanks for your cogent thoughts on ballot security. I almost
completely agree and was one of the first signers of David Dill’s
petition. I am also involved professionally in voter data — from the
campaign side, with voter files, not directly with voting equipment
– but we’re close enough to the vote counting process to see how
it actually works.
I would only disagree slightly in one area. Absentee voting is quite
secure when looking at the overall approach and assessing the risks
in every part of the process. As long as reasonable precautions like
signature checking are done, it would be difficult and expensive to
change the results of mail voting significantly.
For example, in Oregon, ballots are returned in an inside security
envelope which is sealed by the voter. The outside envelope has a
signature area on the back side. This is compared to the voter’s
signature on file at the elections office. The larger counties
actually do a digitized comparison, and back that up with a manual
comparison with a stratified random sample (to validate machine
results on an ongoing basis), as well as a final determination for
any questionable matches.
Certainly it is possible to forge a signature. However, this
authentication process would greatly raise the cost of forged mail
ballots, absent consent of the voter. In turn, interference or
coercion with absentee voting would require much higher travel costs
(at least) than doing so at a polling place, for a given change in
the outcome.
It is true that precincts have poll watchers, and absentee voters do
not. But consider this. Ballot boxes, which are often delivered by
temporary poll workers from the precinct to the elections office, are
occasionally stolen, but mail ballots are handled within a vast stream
of other mail by employees with paychecks and pensions at stake. The
relatively low level of mail fraud inside the postal system is a
testament to its relative security, and the points where ballots are
aggregated for delivery to the elections office are usually on public
property and can also be watched by outside observers if need be.
Oregon has had some elections with 100% ‘vote by mail’ since 1996,
and all elections since 1999. So far, no verifiable evidence of
voter fraud has emerged, despite many checks and some predictions
by those with a political axe to grind that we would be engulfed in
a wave of election fixing.
The reality is that Oregon’s system, which is based on some
common-sense security principles, has proven to be robust. The one
lingering problem has been the need of some counties to make their
voters use punch cards at home because of their antiquated vote
counting equipment. But while this is a vote integrity issue –
since state statistics show a much higher undervote and spoiled
ballot total for punch cards as compared to mark-sense ballots –
it is not a security issue per se. And with Help America Vote Act
(HAVA) funding to convert to more modern vote counting systems, the
Oregon chad remains in only one county and will go extinct after 2004.
The mark-sense (’fill in the ovals’) ballots we have work well, and
have low rates of over-votes and under-votes, despite the lack of
automated machine checking that is possible in well-designed precinct
voting systems. This suggests that reasonable visual design and
human-friendly paper and pencil/pen home voting is a very reliable
and secure system. When aided by automated counting equipment,
we even have the additional benefit of very fast initial counts.
The increase in voter participation in Oregon since the advent of
vote-by-mail — 10 to 30 percentage points above national averages,
depending on the kind of election — leads to the only other issue,
which is slow machine counts on election night after the polls close
due to the surge of late ballots received at drop-off locations
around the state. Oregon in fact isn’t really ‘vote by mail,’ it’s
vote-at-home, with a paper ballot that can be mailed or left at
any official drop-off point in the state, including county election
offices, many schools and libraries, malls, town squares, etc.
The great advantage of the Oregon system is that it relies on the
principle that if you appeal to the best instincts of the citizen,
the overwhelming majority will ‘do our part’ to ensure the integrity
of the democratic voting process, whether it is full consideration
of the candidates and issues before voting, watching to make sure
all ballots are securely transferred and counted, or favoring those
laws and policies that insure that everyone eligible can vote, that
their votes are counted, and that the candidates and measures with
the most votes win.
The system is also cheaper than running traditional precinct
elections. What’s not to like?
