Oregon has increased turnout and raised the comfort level of
security
It’s becoming quite trendy to be a permanent absentee voter – so trendy that these voters have a new name. They’re called “vote-by-mail voters” now that California, along with 35 other states, no longer requires evidence of illness or travel to vote by mail.
The percentage of Santa Clara County’s registered voters who vote by mail is growing quickly and fast approaching 50 percent. One reason for the trend is convenience. With long working hours, bedroom communities and long commutes, it’s difficult for many voters to get to polling places in their hometowns.
A mail ballot can be completed anytime, anyplace, as long as it returned in time to the county registrar of voters with sufficient postage – 58 cents for this election. Vote-by-mail ballots can also be dropped off at polling places on Election Day – Tuesday, Nov. 6 for this election.
But another reason for the change is lack of trust in electronic voting machines. Many voting officials rushed to replace punch-card systems and blamed for problems in the 2000 presidential elections, chose systems that are difficult to audit, offer no paper trail, or are easy to tamper with or even hack.
Many voters concerned about the reliability and trustworthiness of electronic voting machines moved to mail ballots. Those concerns were validated when several electronic voting systems were decertified by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen earlier this year.
As an added bonus, vote-by-mail voters can track when their ballots are mailed to them and received by the registrar at www.sccvote.org. Click the Vote-By-Mail ballot tracking icon on the right side of the screen.
In Oregon, voting is exclusively by mail. It has proven to be a wildly successful experiment, and one that Bowen and Santa Clara County registrar of voters Jesse Durazo ought to investigate.
Oregon has found three important advantages to conducting elections exclusively by mail. First, it’s secure. Voting by mail provides a paper trail. Signatures on every ballot are verified before the ballot is counted. Paper ballots are available in the event a hand recount becomes necessary.
Second, it has increased voter turnout. In the 2004 presidential election, 70 percent of registered voters in Oregon cast ballots, compared to 60 percent nationwide.
Third, it has saved money. That’s because Oregon no longer needs to rent polling places or train and pay poll workers. Votes cast by mail are 30 percent cheaper than votes cast at polling places, Oregon has found.
It’s hard to find a downside to running elections exclusively by mail. Let’s learn from Oregon and see if its exclusively mail ballots will work in our cash-strapped county and state.
