Oregon blazes mail trail

Nation looks to state for new election system model Post office has been the main polling place since 2000
By Jim Redden / The Portland Tribune / May 16, 2006
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Is vote-by-mail the solution to the election controversies that have gripped other parts of the country for much of the past six years? A growing number of election reform advocates think so, including Dave Jackson, a member of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition, one of numerous grass-roots groups across the country worried that elections are rife with fraud and cheating.

“From what I know, Oregon’s vote-by-mail system is the most secure voting system in the country,” Jackson said, explaining that he first began worrying about elections after the 2000 Bush-Gore counting debacle. The vote-by-mail system will be on full display in today’s primary election. The offices of the Multnomah County Elections Division will hum with activity as around 150 temporary workers process ballots that have been filled out and mailed in by county voters.

Signatures will be checked, ballots will be inspected and automated counting machines will tabulate the results that are scheduled to be released beginning at 8 p.m. Voters have until then to bring their ballots by the office, at 1040 S.E. Morrison St., for them to count. To learn more about how the system works, Jackson and two other coalition members — Jim Andrews and Kathleen Bushman — visited the office May 8. They met with Multnomah County Director of Elections John Kauffman, who walked them through the office where workers already were busy processing the vote-by-mail ballots that had been streaming in since blank ones for the May 16 primary election were mailed out in late April.

As they walked from room to room, Jackson and the others peppered Kauffman with questions about how the ballots are handled. They wanted to make sure ballots could not be stolen or switched and to know what safeguards prevented elections workers from learning how individual voters cast their ballots.

Jackson, Andrews and Bushman are among thousands across the country who are worried about the integrity of the nation’s voting system. Their concerns were heightened by numerous problems with Ohio’s primary election, which was held May 2. Among other things, some Ohio voters and elections workers had problems using the state’s new computerized touch-screen voting machines. Similar problems have plagued elections in other states in recent years, too.

In response to questions about the situation in Ohio, Kauffman explained that such problems cannot happen in Oregon because vote-by-mail requires paper ballots that are fed through relatively simple tabulating machines. Voters cast their votes by using pens to fill in ovals on the ballots. Because nothing has to be punched out, the ballots are not marred by the hanging, dimpled or pregnant chads made infamous in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

At one point in the tour, Kauffman, Jackson and the others watched workers test the six machines that will count all of the ballots cast in Multnomah County, beginning early in the morning on election day. The same set of specially prepared ballots was run through each machine, which then produced a printout of the results. Elections workers checked to make sure each machine tabulated the ballots correctly.

After the tour, Jackson praised Kauffman and the other elections workers for carefully handling the ballots and properly maintaining the counting machines. Despite that, Jackson and the other coalition members still plan to spend election day at the office, watching for any irregularities.

“I think Kauffman and the other employees are trying really hard to do their jobs right, but you can’t be too careful these days. There’s too much at stake,” Jackson said.

System has its critics

Longtime anti-tax activist Don McIntire believes vote-by-mail elections are open to more fraud than conventional polling place elections, however. McIntire, the father of Oregon’s property-tax limitation system, is convinced that unscrupulous partisans are coercing voters in their homes and using ballots that have been mailed to the wrong addresses.
“It should be called fraud-by-mail, not vote-by-mail,” McIntire said.
But no proof of widespread fraud has ever been found in vote-by-mail elections, said Anne Martens, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who oversees all elections in Oregon. According to Bradbury’s office, only six people have been prosecuted for voting violations since the state began conducting all elections by mail six years ago.
“That’s a very small number,” Martens said.
The state first began experimenting with local vote-by-mail elections in 1981 and started holding all elections by mail in 2000. Today’s election is the fourth statewide primary to be conducted through the mail in Oregon.
According to Kauffman, there are many reasons why Oregonians have embraced vote-by-mail elections, including their convenience.
“If you want to vote at home, you can. If you want to vote someplace else, you can. If you don’t want to put it in the mail, you can bring it in or drop it off at an official drop site,” he said.
McIntire decries vote-by-mail as undermining the sense of community created by traditional elections, however. As McIntire sees it, democracy came alive when all voters visited their local polling places on the same day.
“It was like a Norman Rockwell painting. You got to see your neighbors, they got to see you, and you all got the sense you were doing something important,” he said.
It is unlikely the state will go back to polling place elections, however. Oregon voters placed a measure requiring all primary and general elections to be held by mail on the ballot in June 1998. It was approved at the general election held five months later, 757,204 votes in favor to 334,021 against. A 2003 poll conducted by the University of Oregon found that 81 percent of Oregonians prefer vote-by-mail to polling place elections.

High-tech voting can be iffy

Now a new reason for sticking with mail elections has been added to the mix — security. After the problems counting votes in Florida’s 2000 presidential election, public attention focused on the nuts and bolts of the nation’s voting system. Similar problems were found in other states using punch card ballots.
Congress responded by passing the Helping Americans Vote Act of 2002. Among other things, it provided funds for states to update their voting systems. Many states — but not Oregon — began switching over to the latest generations of computerized touch-screen machines, similar to bank ATMs.
But the touch-screen computers have proven to be even more controversial than the punch-card ballots. Some voters have problems using the machines, including elderly voters who may not be used to computers. And many have voiced concerns that the machines do not use or produce paper ballots that can be counted by hand in case a recount is required.
According to the nonprofit Open Voting Consortium, approximately 30 percent of the votes in the 2004 general election were cast on machines that could not be audited.
The ongoing controversies are fueling a grass-roots movement of activists demanding reforms, including a return to old-fashioned paper ballots. More and more, they are looking at Oregon’s vote-by-mail system as a national model. Paper ballots are available for recounts, and elections officials check the signature of every voter who casts a ballot.
According to Martens, the only other state that checks every signature is New York — and it does not require paper ballots in every race.
“Vote-by-mail is more secure than any polling place election, and more secure than any touch-screen,” Martens said.
Oregon’s vote-by-mail system is being praised by reform activists across the country. Some, including Jackson, believe it could be improved by requiring random audits after each election to ensure the accuracy of the results. A number of current reform proposals include a routine audit requirement.
“As good as vote-by-mail is, it could be better,” Jackson said.
Kauffman argues that random audits are not necessary because state law requires automatic recounts of all close elections.
“As long as an outcome is in question, there will be a recount,” Kauffman said.

Add it up

Although voting by mail may be simple, counting the ballots is not. In the weeks before today’s primary election, the Multnomah County Elections Office had to hire approximately 150 temporary employees to process the ballots that arrived every day in the mail. The employees were spread out over four rooms on two floors in the Morrison Street office, including most of the building’s sprawling basement.
By last Thursday morning, the workers were busy in all four rooms. Ballots arrived from the post office in boxes, each still inside two envelopes — a return mail envelope signed by the voters and, inside that, a secrecy envelope with no way of identifying the voters.
When the envelopes first arrive, workers sort through them, finding and setting aside approximately 6 percent to 8 percent that could not be delivered because the name and address did not match.
According to Kauffman, in the vast majority of cases where ballots could not be delivered, it’s because voters moved since the last election and the ballots cannot legally be forwarded to their new addresses. Fictitious registrations — if any — also will be returned by the post office. Several weeks after the election is over, elections officials will remove all those voters from the registration rolls.
The envelopes containing all ballots submitted by voters then will be checked to make sure they are properly signed and, if so, they will be opened and the secrecy envelope will be removed. Without knowing who mailed the envelope back, workers then will open it and remove the ballots.
Workers then inspect the ballots to make sure the marks are dark enough to be read by the counting machines. If the marks are not dark enough but the intent is clear, the workers are allowed to enhance but not change the marks. Members of the public, including official representatives of political parties, are allowed to watch this process to make sure the workers are not changing votes or voting in races that were left blank.
The ballots are organized by precinct and run through the counting machines on election day. Because around 40 percent of Multnomah County’s 309,000 registered voters are expected to cast ballots, the counting will start early in the day and take many hours to complete. Partial results will be released shortly after 8 p.m., the traditional time when the polls close. The count will be updated throughout the evening and into the next day until it is complete.
Kauffman says his office has taken many precautions to make sure no cheating occurs. For example, all of the rooms used to store and process ballots can be opened only by authorized employees with pass cards. The counting machines are not connected to the Internet or even a phone line, to prevent anyone from hacking in to them. And they are tested again election morning to make sure their results are accurate.
“No system designed by humans is ever perfect,” Kauffman said. “But we’re confident the results will be accurate, and we can count all the ballots by hand if we have to.”
Email Jim Redden

Secret ballots remain secret
Vote-by-mail elections require both the voters and county elections officials to follow a number of steps to make sure ballots remain confidential and are accurately counted. Elections officials and watchdog groups agree these steps minimize the possibility of fraud in Oregon elections.
1. Voters receive their ballots in the mail approximately two weeks before an election day. Each voter receives a ballot without his or her name on it, a secrecy envelope without a name on it and a return mail envelope that includes the name and address, a unique bar code and a place for a signature.
2. Voters fill out their ballots at their convenience.
3. Voters place their completed ballots in their secrecy envelopes.
4. Voters place their secrecy envelopes in their return mail envelopes.
5. Voters read the voter’s statement on the back of the envelope, which says that only the registered voter who received the ballot can legally cast it, and that this is the only ballot the voter has used. Voters sign the envelopes certifying they have complied with the election laws. It is a Class C felony to falsely sign the envelopes.
6. Voters return their ballots to their county elections offices by mail or in person, or they leave them at official ballot drop sites.
7. Before opening the return mail envelopes, elections workers scan the unique bar codes to help track who has voted.
8. Before opening the return mail envelopes, elections workers compare the voters’ signatures with signatures on voter registration cards. If the signatures do not match, the voters are notified and asked to contact their county elections officials.
9. To maintain the secrecy of the ballots, the return mail envelopes are opened by groups of elections employees in an open, public process. The unopened secrecy envelopes are taken out and separated from the return mail envelopes.
10. In the second stage of the process, the secrecy envelopes are opened and the ballots are taken out.
11. Without being able to identify the voters, elections workers inspect the ballots to make sure they can be read by vote-counting machines. If the ballot is not machine-readable but the intent is clear, elections workers are allowed to enhance the marks or duplicate the ballots so they are more readable. This happens in an open, public process.
12. The ballots are tallied by the vote-counting machines and the results are announced to the public.