Relax Florida, Vote-By-Mail Works Just Fine

We've been voting by mail here in Oregon for a long time. Oregonians began testing the process in 1981 and finally overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure in 1998 to make all elections vote-by-mail. Here's a history.

The proponents say that it, "Increases voter participation. Removes barriers that can keep people from getting to the polls. Allows more time for people to study issues and candidates before marking the ballot. Has built-in safeguards that increase the integrity of the elections process (and) saves taxpayer dollars."

That seems to be the case.

What they don't say is that it eliminates thousands machines at the polling places... machines that can be tampered-with.

The best thing is that it provides a paper trail.

How does it work? Your ballot arrives in the mail. You fill it out. You put it in an envelope and then that envelope inside another. You sign the back and mail it out. If you miss the deadline there are several locations where you can drop it off up until the "polls close" on election day.

Pretty easy.

Want to know more? Find out here.

As a former East-Coaster, I miss going out to vote on election day, but when you think about it, what does that have to do with the issues or really anything except what you're used to.

The only problem with installing the process in Florida is time. We've worked out the bugs here in Oregon. There have been talks between officials in Florida and in Oregon.

Of course, the process couldn't get any worse in Florida, could it? I'm guessing that the folks in Florida might like our process and adopt it as their own.

Beware objections, Floridians, they're probably coming from those who don't want an honest count.

Comments

[ncvoter]

Florida is known for its fraudulent elections. They can't handle absentee by mail ballots now, and they sure can't handle having millions of ballots cast that way.

10/26/2004 Paper ballots (late) Broward County. 58,000 ballots that were supposed to mailed out on Oct. 7 and 8 are late and appear to be missing.

11/16/2004 Broward County. 94% of 78,861 absentee ballots were recorded in favor of Amendment 4, which passed by a thin margin in the county. The votes in question were counted late on election night after a glitch was discovered in the computers tallying absentees.

11/16/2004 The unmarked brown box sat unnoticed in the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections office until Monday, two weeks after the election, when an employee cleaning a desk stumbled upon it. Inside were 268 uncounted absentee ballots.

11/14/2004 Absentee voting problems were a "disaster.­" Voters were unable to confirm the status of their request for an absentee ballot. In some cases, by the time they realized a ballot wasn't on its way, it was too late. Hundreds of voters couldn't vote because their early orders for ballots disappeared.

10/30/2004 Miami-Dade. Only half the absentee ballots have been returned. Some voters have complained they have not received their ballots in the mail -- A printing delay initially slowed down the mailing of the ballots

10/30/2004 Paper ballots (late). Broward County. 2505 absentee ballots were mailed on Saturday (October 30).

10/29/2004 Fraud. People posing as election officials are attempting to collect absentee ballots and trick voters into not going to the polls. They are also giving misleading information about voting and the polls and asking for personal information about the voters' debts and parking tickets.

10/29/2004 Voter challenges. Republican party uses the flawed felon list to challeng a list of 925 voters they say have either voted early or requested an absentee ballot. 580 were Democrats, 214 were Republicans, 127 were independents and four were members of minor parties.

http://tinyurl.com/2x9nqr

[antiquity]

I've already offered a "split" decision - leave Florida as-is, inluding popular vote totals, but split delegates 1/2 to each.

As for Michigan, read the Detroit Free Press article for the reasons why no other Dems could be on the ballot and you'll get a sense why they're in this pickle - Republican Senate Leader in Michigan refused to put forth legislation to follow their House bill, to include all Dems on the ballot, not just Candidate Clinton. And, so they were not on the ballot. All non-Clinton votes had to be labeled something else.

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to why Republicans would not want anyone but Clinton? Was she just lucky?

My soltution for Michigan? Leave it as it was, give all "non-Clinton" votes to Obama, and split the delegate count in half.

No cost, no foul, no harm, everyone gets a little and loses a little. All is done, period.

Any takers?

[Henry]

The best thing about Oregon voting is the fact that you can defer to your wife's wisdom, have her fill out each ballot, and then all you need to do (assuming you are married to the right left-wing person) is sign and date the mail in ballot. Think of the gahz o lihnka saved. It so outrages the gas guzzlin right!

[PragmaticProgressive]

I agree that mail voting is a good idea. I just don't see it as pragmatically feasible to conduct one by the beginning of June in a pretty big state with a history of mail voting fraud.

[SamanthaJaneSalem]

In Oregon we may have Tonya Harding, Lars Larson, and an anti-gay initiative on the ballot of every other year-- but are we as crazy as Florida? Even the Jail Blazers are once again the Trail Blazers. So I'm not sure we in Oregon can compete with the kind of corruption and fraud that might take place in the land of felons purged lists, Katherine Harris and her purple eyeshadow gone bad, Jeb, and more "Odd Ball" participants on Keith Olbermann's show than any other state.

The latte-sippers at Powell's Books and college professors on 23rd Avenue will deliver Multnomah County-- and therefore Oregon-- for Obama.

Florida has Miami, the Tampa area, Orlando and Jacksonville-- that's like five Portlands. Can it handle that much mail? With just a couple weeks to organize it?

It's raining. I think I'll study my voter's pamphlet instead of going to the sunny beach or that Disney park in Woodburn (or maybe that's an outlet mall, I forget). Plenty of time to choose the candidate who is anti-war, pro-change, decent, and nice!