People where I live get a ballot and a book in the mail weeks before the election with details for all the candidates and questions, and all you have to do is drop it in the outgoing mail. Takes no more than 30min of your time, maybe 1 hour if you are a slow reader. And yet, less than 20% voter participation.
It is ironic that turnout for national elections, where their vote is moot is much higher. But for school boards, county positions, and city positions that actually have an effect on day to day life and expenses, people do not care as much.
WA? That's how it was in Vancouver when I lived there. Best system I've experience so far. Also felt the government was very fair and in line with the community.
I'm in WA now, came from MN. It infuriates me thinking about voting in-person: my wife and I used to go to our city hall, wait in line maybe a half hour to 45 minutes. We'd snake our way through the line, get our IDs checked, fill out these forms just so, and if you get a technicality wrong, you'd have to work with someone to fix it. Yadda yadda, finally you'd have time in a booth to cast your vote.
But now in WA, my wife and I typically make our morning coffee, sit out on the patio, read through the voter guide to understand what the arguments for and against a particular ballot initiative are and the statements given by individuals. We vote together, sign our ballot, seal it up, then we drive three blocks to a local drop site (only because I prefer doing that versus putting it in my mailbox).
It's super easy to participate in the system here, and in my jaded perspective, that's exactly why certain people and organizations hate it so much.
The secret ballot is normally considered a cornerstone of democracy. Mail in voting completely destroys that. In my jaded perspective, that’s exactly why certain people and organizations love it so much.
Mail in voting is still secret ballot - you have an internal "secrecy sleeve" that is in turn mailed in an outer envelope. The outer envelope signature is compared to the signature on file, and then the internal envelope is removed but is not opened in the same location.
That doesn't stop a determined group of canvassers from going door to door and pressuring people to fill out their ballots on the spot while they wait on their doorstep. It's also a perfect time to offer a bribe or incentive for a speedy completion.
There's no way that any form of remote ballot is going to be as secure as doing it in person. It's just not possible because you will never know the provenance. Like most things that involve the legal system, it's not the law abiding that we're worried about.
I actually wonder how viable it would be to devise a targeted ballot spoiling attack.
Picture this:
Have a canvasser or harvester pick up mail in ballots. They take it to a safe house and open the envelopes. If it’s a vote for the candidate they don’t like, put marks on it so it doesn’t get counted. Place it in a new return envelope.
You’ve just cancelled that person’s vote. If someone checked that their vote was counted they wouldn’t be able to see that it was spoilt.
You could potentially just throw away the ballot too, I doubt most people check that they were actually received. But it does seem slightly more likely to raise eyebrows. I’m sure you could chalk it up to just getting lost at the post office.
You can't just return your ballot in any envelope, you'd have to have access to excess return envelopes which is a tall task.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by adding marks invalidating the ballot. If you fill out a ballot incorrectly, the poll workers will notify you that there are issues with your ballot.
In Colorado, the return envelope has a unique barcode and has to be signed on the outside. Not fullproof, since they could print a new envelope with the same code and forge the signature, but not as easy as just having a stack of return envelopes to use.
If there were canvassers knocking on doors and offering bribes for ballots you would hear about it here in Washington state. People here take their voting rights seriously.
Indeed. If you think the results from yesterday were a shellacking, imagine the carnage if there was no early or mail-in voting. In VA in particular there were ballots cast as early as late September. Given the turn of the contest in the final weeks, nobody could say with a straight face they would have all lined up to vote for McAuliffe in person. There's a reason certain groups want to bank those votes in advance.
Indeed. It's not unheard of that a local election in Britain is invalidated because of voting irregularities - someone collected ballot papers and made sure the vote goes to their man. I hear that that happens in ethnic enclaves in Miami as well.
The vote doesn't have to be convenient, but it absolutely has to be safe. Voter intimidation is impossible with in-person voting.
The book is terrible. I toss it out and read the proposal or at the worst look it up on a few sites that track issues. There is not enough information for complex issues and the wording in my experience is very biased. It takes me more time to vote, but at least I can make an informed decision.
> People where I live get a ballot and a book in the mail weeks before the election with details for all the candidates and questions, and all you have to do is drop it in the outgoing mail.
Are the votes not secret or are the votes not verified as authentic?
It is ironic that turnout for national elections, where their vote is moot is much higher. But for school boards, county positions, and city positions that actually have an effect on day to day life and expenses, people do not care as much.