Forced vote-by-mail belongs with New Coke in oblivion

Remember “New Coke”? All the experts agreed it was the wave of the future. It would taste better and outsell Pepsi forever.

Everything was perfectly planned, except none of that happened. The public hated it, the experts were wrong, and New Coke was one of the biggest product bombs of the 20th century.

One day people will remember forced vote- by-mail in the same way.

Our election officials, led by Secretary of State Sam Reed, have touted vote-by-mail as the answer to election problems nationwide. They claim it will decrease election fraud, increase voter turnout, and save taxpayers millions.

Their promotion has prompted other states to consider forced mail-balloting measures. On Election Day, Arizona voters had a chance to approve Proposition 205, which would have mandated vote-by-mail in the Grand Canyon State.

Fortunately, Arizona citizens rejected the measure 71 to 29 percent. Not even the Congressional Republicans lost that badly.

Although vote-by-mail was sold to both Arizona and Washington citizens as being a check against voter fraud, voting-by-mail is “the tool of choice, for those inclined to commit voter fraud,” according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The 2001 National Commission on Federal Election Reform and the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, both co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter, each concluded that mail ballots present the best opportunity for fraud.

It makes sense. At the polls, the only time ballots are not under the direct supervision of election workers is when a voter takes his ballot to vote in a private voting booth. Election officials have no control over mail ballots for weeks; many are never returned.

This lack of control allows ample opportunity for ballots to be stolen, altered or destroyed, both before ballots are delivered and after. Even if a voter receives his ballot intact, the secrecy of the voting booth has been destroyed. Domineering family members, friends, union officials, employers, nursing home workers or religious leaders can ensure the voter cast a ballot “correctly.”

These are not just theoretical dangers. In Virginia, a mayor and 13 residents of a small town have been charged with stealing ballots from mailboxes and casting them fraudulently.

In Hartford, Conn., eight local politicians were arrested for absentee ballot fraud, including a state representative who last year pleaded guilty to “encouraging” voters in a housing complex to vote for him.

Richard Mawrey, a judge in England who presided over a 2005 case where hundreds of absentee ballots were altered said, “Postal ballots are sent out in ordinary mail in clearly identifiable envelopes. Short of writing ‘STEAL ME’ on the envelopes, it is hard to see what more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands.”

Mail voting is “hopelessly insecure,” said Mawrey. “The system is wide open to fraud and any would-be political fraudster knows that it’s wide open to fraud.”

Proponents of mail balloting claim that signature verification will make it almost impossible to commit fraud. Unfortunately signature verification cannot stop the types of fraud listed above. The other problem is that signatures change daily and election workers, who have minimal training checking signatures, have to process thousands of ballots in a few days.

This makes the process error-prone. Every year in Washington, hundreds of voters who use absentee ballots have their ballots set aside, because the signature on their voter registration does not match the signature on their ballot. Often the voter did nothing wrong, their signature simply changed with time. Unless the voter provides the elections office with written notification, his ballot would not count.

Compare your signatures on your credit cards, voter registration and checks and you will realize this could happen to you.

Advocates in Arizona and Washington have also touted forced vote-by-mail as a way to increase turnout. Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, has studied voting patterns for years. He found that states that adopted reforms to make it easier to vote absentee “actually hurt voter turnout … in virtually every election since 1988 – both presidential and mid-terms.”

Arizona and Washington supporters claim forced mail voting will save tax dollars. Even this is not always the case; it all depends on what is considered a cost. Professor Melody Rose of the University of Portland found that purported savings in an all-mail ballot system “largely depends on how ‘costs’ are defined. Expenses have shifted from the state to the voter.” Both Pierce and King counties have found that switching to vote-by-mail would increase election expenses.

Arizona’s rejection of vote-by-mail should be a wake-up call to election officials.

Happily for Coke drinkers, Coca-Cola realized the error of New Coke and quickly brought back the previous formula.

Unfortunately, when election officials make a hasty move to vote-by-mail, it is not as easy to correct.