Vote by mail spreads across U.S.

Elections - Early and mail-in voters have doubled since 2000 nationally, and recent poll scandals add to its momentum
Monday, January 01, 2007
JEFF MAPES
The Oregonian

For original article

Voters in the rest of the country are joining Oregonians in skipping the tradition of going to polling places on Election Day.

About 30 percent of voters in the November election either cast their ballot by mail or filled it out in the early election centers set up by some states, according to estimates by Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland.

That's more than double the 14 percent of voters who cast an early ballot in 2000, the year Oregon began conducting all of its voting by mail.

Since Oregon first experimented with mail balloting in 1981, a rotating cast of pundits, academics and politicians have complained that vote by mail is subject to fraud, violates the sanctity of the secret ballot and destroys the civic ritual of voting on Election Day. Following the Florida election debacle in the 2000 presidential race, Oregon's senators had to work to amend an election reform bill so it did not outlaw vote by mail.

Despite the complaints about mail voting -- objections disputed by Oregon election officials -- it has proven to be popular with voters.

"It will continue to increase because more citizens are finding this convenient and more states are easing their absentee ballot rules," said Gronke, who teaches political science at Reed.

Twenty-nine states allow voters to obtain an absentee ballot without giving a reason. Fifteen states allow voters to cast early ballots at will in person, often at special early election locations.

The West Coast had some of the most dramatic increases in mail voting.

In Washington, a new state law made it easier for counties to conduct their elections entirely by mail. In November, 34 of the state's 39 counties voted entirely by mail, and absentee balloting ran heavy in the other counties. All told, 89 percent of voters cast mail ballots, up from 68 percent in 2004 and 54 percent in 2000.

In California, voters can sign up to be permanent absentee voters, and nearly 42 percent voted by mail in November, up from about 25 percent in 2000.

The growing popularity of early voting -- mostly by mail -- has encouraged vote-by-mail supporters in Oregon to promote it nationally.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced legislation last year along with Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Barack Obama of Illinois, to provide federal funding to help states and localities switch to mail voting. He plans to reintroduce the legislation in the next Congress, where the new Democratic majority has expressed interest in taking another look at election reform in the wake of the problems some states had with newly installed touch-screen electronic voting machines.

The Washington Post recently ran a column by Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury bragging about the state's trouble-free election. Thanks to mail voting, he noted, the Election Day storm that dumped 13 inches of rain on Tillamook County didn't hurt turnout. "Vote by mail has emerged as a really good low-tech, fraud-free alternative that fits with people's lifestyles," Bradbury said.

Bradbury helped Portland activist Adam Smith form The Vote by Mail Project, a nonprofit group pushing for other states to adopt mail voting.

Smith said he has received financial backing from the National Association of Letter Carriers, the union that represents mail carriers who are understandably interested in increasing the volume of first-class mail. He said unions in general like mail voting because it gives them more time to encourage their members to vote.

Smith said he has quickly learned the limits of public support for mail balloting in other states. That became clear in Arizona in November, when an election reform activist there put a vote-by-mail initiative on the ballot -- only to be buried under a 79 percent "no" vote.

Although Arizona has an growing number of absentee voters, opponents argued they didn't want to lose the ability to also vote at a polling place on Election Day.

"It's asking a lot for people to make that kind of wholesale change all at once," said Smith, adding that he is instead focused on liberalizing absentee ballot rules. He noted that if voters are allowed to become permanent absentees, the number of people voting at polling places steadily declines.

In fact, that's what happened in Oregon. By 1998, most voters were casting absentee ballots, and an initiative to conduct all elections by mail passed easily.

John Fortier, author of the book, "Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils," said he's concerned about how many states are proceeding haphazardly into early voting.

Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, is critical that some states don't check all of the voter signatures on the envelopes of returned ballots, as is done in Oregon. And he said that instead of mail voting, he would prefer that states set up early voting centers the week before an election. That would preserve the secrecy of the voting booth while also giving more flexibility to people who can't get to the polls on Election Day.

But he conceded that mail voting has gained momentum.

"I don't think we're actually going back" to voting solely in polling places, he said. "I agree that people like the convenience."

Jeff Mapes: 503-221-8209; jeffmapes@news.oregonian.com