The following comments are by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D. They may be found at the http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-77.htm web site:
What are the problems with mail ballots?
In early 2006 I was asked by a local election official to tabulate the problems I'd seen with mail ballot elections and absentee balloting. Obviously, conscientious election officials do their best to minimize these problems. However, the "less conscientious" do their best to simply hide "mistakes" and all too often we've encountered, and document in this chapter, incompetent or corrupt election officials who ignore or are ignorant of the problems listed here.
It is also impossible for election officials to defend against and prevent all the problems listed here in a given election using mail ballots. Thus, while the limited use of absentee ballots may be necessary, their usage should be strictly controlled and the closest possible scrutiny applied to all ballots sent and received by mail.
As noted in this chapter, all-mail ballot elections have been widely touted, but have not been as successful as politicians would like us to believe. In no case should all-mail elections be used, especially in special district elections involving developers, or other elections where large dollar or tax issues are at stake.
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• Falsified voter registrations are common.
With the present trend to allow voter registration forms by mail, fake or invalid voter registrations are not limited to mail ballots. But precinct voting puts an additional check as the individual must appear in person at each polling place. Since no personal appearance is ever required with mail-in registration and a mail-in ballot, it becomes trivial to vote under a fake or assumed name.
Identity theft is widely recognized as a major problem. Why then should it be a surprise that fake voter registrations are common?
• Poll books and voter registration rolls are corrupt with no independent check possible.
This problem is so widespread that the states of Alaska and Montana, and 261 counties in other states certified more voters than the actual adult population during the 2000 general election. Phantom voters are also widespread in Colorado and California.
While precinct voting requires the voter to appear in person and present some identification that matches the information in the precinct poll book, anyone can mail in a ballot for a name that appears on the statewide or county voter registration rolls. And with mail in elections there are thousands of ballots floating around.
• Voter disenfranchisement of about one-third of registered voters occurs as ballots are only mailed to active voters.
While "inactive" voters, i.e., anyone who didn't vote in the last federal election can obtain a ballot by contacting the county clerk, most voters are unaware of that requirement and are never given a chance to vote.
Mailing ballots only to "active" voters allows county clerks to play games with costs as well. Obviously if you don't have to print and mail ballots to one-third of the registered voters the cost will be less. Is saving money a primary objective of an election?
One also hears claims that voter turnout is greater with mail ballot elections. The way that game works is that clerks divide the number of ballots returned (dividend) by the number they mail out (divisor) rather than the total number of registered voters as they should. Since ballots are only mailed to "active" voters, who are more likely to vote anyway, the dividend is increased, and the divisor is decreased by one third, the apparent percentage will obviously appear to increase. In fact, no significant difference in voter turnout has been established between precinct and mail ballot elections as shown below.
Games are also played with mailing ballots to other voters than those marked "active" in the poll books. Valid reasons for doing this include ballots mailed to voters who registered after the last general election and voters who request a ballot. However, there are no constraints or checks on who these supernumeraries are and it gives the unscrupulous plenty of room to send ballots to parties otherwise unqualified to vote or who deliberately send in falsified registration forms in order to obtain a mail ballot. And it should always be recalled that the first step toward stuffing the ballot box is obtaining a ballot.
Experience has shown time and again that if there is a loophole in the way an election is run that someone will take advantage of it. There is simply too much money and power traded in an election for fraud not to be an issue.
• Voters may be disenfranchised by selectively purging voter registration roles or intercepting mail ballots.
The pitfalls of voter registration are covered in a separate chapter but make it relatively easy to ensure that ballots are only sent to "selected" voters in mail ballot elections. That already occurs as noted above but can easily be fine tuned further.
Other tricks involve putting one group of voter's ballots in a different type of envelope that is easily recognized and intercepted. That method is most effective in small, special district elections. Or the voter's party affiliation may be printed on the envelopes, as done in Florida, making it easy to "lose" ballots from the "wrong" party.
• Eligible voters are disenfranchised when someone else returns their mail ballot without their knowledge or consent.
Election officials are either unaware of, or choose to ignore the exploding problems with identity theft. In February 2006 150,000 voter records went missing in Denver, Colorado. In an ill-fated experiment with voting centers during the November 2006 all voter registration records for Denver City and County were put on dozens, perhaps hundreds of laptops distributed to all the voting centers. Theft of those records would have been, and probably was, trivial.
Voter registration records contain voters' names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, signatures, and addresses. Only the most naive or incompetent could claim there is no risk of election fraud and identity theft using these records.
• Even with requested absentee ballots about 10% may be returned by the Post Office as undeliverable to that address.
Many times the address isn't valid, as anyone who has ever walked a precinct for a candidate will say. Or a dummy address was given, the address given was simply wrong, the address given was unreadable by the election staff, or they copied the address wrong, e.g., mistaking a 1 for a 7. In all such cases the voter doesn't receive the ballot requested and may not realize it until too late to obtain a replacement and is disenfranchised as a result.
• Unknown numbers of ballots are lost either in the mail or after receipt by clerk.
Unless the mailed ballot is received back by the election officials there is really no way they can tell whether or not the ballot reached its destination. There is also the open question of whether the destination the ballot reached was the registered voter for whom it was intended, or was it intercepted (ballots are frequently stolen from mailboxes).
It is known that mailed ballots are frequently lost because many are repeatedly "found" after the election is over.
• Wrong writing instruments are often used by voters at home to mark ballots.
If the wrong writing instrument is used to mark a ballot the optical scanners that count the ballot may not read it correctly. Optical scanners used for counting votes may only read pencil, may be sensitive to type or color of ink used in a pen, or voter may use a colored pen or pencil, or even crayon that doesn't scan correctly.
For additional information on this problem see the report by Prof. Douglas Jones (PDF) on tests conducted in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona. An example of this problem in an election is described for the November 2003 election in Garfield County, Colorado.
• Contradictory instructions may be given to voters on how to mark ballots.
Improperly marked ballots may or may not be counted by the voting machines. In one documented case voters were instructed to use pen in the instructions on the envelope and to use a pencil on the ballot.
ES&S optical scanners use red light to illuminate the ballot and therefore cannot read ballot markings made with red pencils or ink. Frequently voters are not warned of that problem.
• Repeat voting is easily accomplished.
No method exists of checking for duplicate handwriting if an individual has registered under multiple names at multiple addresses by mailing in multiple registration forms. The chance of detecting such fraud is very low and the probability that the perpetrator will be successfully prosecuted is near zero.
• People receive ballots for others, e.g., parents whose children have left home, apartment dwellers, fraternities, sororities, nursing homes, etc., and may fill out and submit those ballots.
Signature verification is used to reduce this but many spouses forge their partners signature. Digital signatures can be purchased or stolen. Scanning and printing someone else's signature is easily done with today's technology.
In some counties signature verification is perfunctory, or not done at all, and no standards exist for signature verification.
• Voter signature and birthday often appears on outside of envelope compromising voter's privacy and security.
This problem can be avoided by using an extra secrecy envelope inside the mailed envelope. But an extra envelope adds to costs of printing, collating, and postage so many jurisdictions don't use them.
• Ineligible ballots from voters who have moved or are otherwise ineligible, e.g., in prison, are counted.
Mail ballots that were counted in an election have been verified to have been sent by people who had not only moved, but moved out of the county, the state, and sometimes the country.
• Total loss of ballot inventory and control is inherent.
Careful ballot control and inventory is one of the most basic precautions inherent in an election to forestall ballot box stuffing. However, with mail elections tens of thousands of ballots simply "disappear," or are found in dumpsters, garbage cans, etc. Unscrupulous individuals then go "dumpster diving" at appropriate times after ballots are mailed and attempt to vote the discarded ballots.
• Thousands of ballots are sent to questionable and temporary addresses (fraternities, sororities, nursing homes, apartment houses, brothels, motels, bars, empty homes, etc.).
America is a nation of transients and roughly one quarter of the population moves every year. However, citizens rarely tell the county clerk at their old address that they've moved. So mail ballots are received by the new tenants, owners, college kids, motels, realtors, developers, etc., and these ballots may be forwarded as well.
• No independent check is possible on whether a voter received the proper ballot style, or whether the ballot they receive has all applicable issues and candidates included (or excluded).
There are tens, and sometimes over a hundred different ballot styles in an election. Each ballot style contains only those candidates and issues a voter is eligible to vote on based on their physical address. In a precinct election it is fairly clear what candidates and issues are unique to that precinct and what ballot styles are given to voters by the election judges.
But when ballots are mailed out to all voters there is no way to independently check that the voter got the right ballot style.
And even if the voter gets the right ballot style, and correctly marks the ballot, there is no way to determine if their ballot is correctly counted.
• Voter intimidation by employers, unions, political parties, neighbors, special interests, relatives, and others is enabled and encouraged.
A fundamental protection provided by a voting booth in a polling place is privacy and the ability to vote in secret as one sees fit for the candidates and issues of the voter's choice, free of intimidation and outside influence (electioneering is usually forbidden within 100 feet of a polling place).
That fundamental protection is entirely lost with mail ballots. How you vote is open to inspection, influence, and review by everyone the voter interacts with. Some may find it acceptable, and even desirable, to sit around the kitchen table, or in a neighborhood or union meeting and fill out their ballots. Usually, however, such individuals have something to gain by influencing how people vote, e.g. the voter's employer.
• Electioneering.
In a precinct election a fundamental protection for voters is the prohibition of candidates, representatives, or any election materials, e.g. posters, signs, handouts, etc., typically within 100 feet (33 meters) of the polling place so that voters are undisturbed and unsolicited while they vote in secret.
Just the opposite occurs with mail ballots. Generally candidates or supporters can get a list of who has requested or been sent a mail ballot from the county clerk and then call the voter, send mail to them, even visit them in order to influence and pressure the voter into voting for them or the candidates and issues they support.
• Vote buying and selling is enabled.
The major problem with buying and selling votes is verifying how the voter actually marked their ballot. In precinct elections the voter only receives a ballot after identifying themselves to the election judges. The voter then takes the ballot to a booth where they vote in private and no one else can see how they've voted. Once the ballot is marked any identifying information is removed and the ballot dropped in a sealed box.
At no time is a voter allowed to leave the polling place with their ballot, marked or unmarked, to avoid any possibility the voter might be selling their vote, formerly a very common practice in American elections. Nor are cameras or cell phones allowed in polling places.
As noted above, by design verifying how the voter marked their ballot is very difficult to do in a precinct election. However, with a mail ballot there is no problem at all verifying how the voter marked their ballot before they put it back in the mail to be counted. In fact, the buyer will often insist on mailing, or delivering the ballot themselves just to be sure.
• Ballots can be and are collected from voters by special assistants who may or may not deliver the ballots for counting, or who may help the voter fill out their ballots.
In Texas this process is so ingrained that a cadre of vote whores are regularly employed to collect ballots and ensure they are "properly" marked. In Colorado this process has been especially pronounced in special district elections where real estate developers are involved.
In some locations, e.g., Florida, the voter's party is stamped on the envelope by the county clerk before mailing. Thus, activists can often ensure voters from the opposing party do not receive mail ballots. In other jurisdictions, or in special elections, other forms of marking, e.g., different colored envelopes have been used to distinguish between ballots for opposing camps.
• Back room counting of ballots occurs without citizen oversight and often by relatives or cronies of the county clerk.
In the November 2003 election in Garfield County, Colorado, the counting was done by the county clerk's son and, although the scanner stopped some 1,700 times, the problems were ignored. Eventually that election had to be hand counted by the Colorado Secretary of State's office and the outcome of one candidate race and one tax issue were reversed by the hand count.
In an April 1, 2003, city election in Colorado Springs poll watchers were restricted to a nine square foot area and could not directly observe any counting procedures or ask questions of anyone but the city clerk. These are but two examples of hundreds.
• Eligible votes may not be counted.
If there is a problem with a voter's ballot in precinct voting they are given an immediate opportunity to correct it. While in some isolated cases election officials may call a voter if there is a problem with their mail ballot, typically that doesn't happen. Even if a voter is notified of problems with a mailed ballot it leaves the door wide open to vote manipulation.
As a result, many valid mail ballots are disqualified, rejected, lost, stolen, changed, or delayed beyond the election deadline. Usually there is no easy way for a voter to find out if their mail ballot was counted. And there have been repeated incidents of uncounted mail-in ballots turning up in the clerk's office weeks or months after the election.
• Scanning errors when counting ballots are often ignored.
Again, the November 2003 election in Garfield County, Colorado, is a perfect example of this problem. However, the same problem was apparent when we looked at the logs from the Sequoia optical scanner in the November 2003 mail in election in Denver.
Problems with optical scanners misreading folds in mail ballots have also been discovered. Also, ink or toner may be transferred on a ballot in the press of mailing and the smudge read by the scanner as a vote or overvote.
In a mail in election, or with absentee ballots, it is impossible to know how often election officials turn off the switch on the optical scanners that rejects mismarked ballots. The problem is particularly acute where election officials use autofeeders to push ballots through the scanner. This problem can be somewhat alleviated by hand feeding the ballots but that leaves the process wide open to manipulation as to which ballots are counted and which rejected.
• Ballots are often redone by election officials in order to be machine readable.
When a ballot is rejected for whatever reason by an optical scanner in a precinct election the voter is immediately given a replacement ballot and help, if needed, on how to properly mark their ballot before they return to the voting booth.
With mail ballots, when the scanner rejects the ballot election judges, or the clerk's crony or relative, fills out a new ballot "interpreting" the voter's intent as best they can. As in Colorado Springs, this is often done outside the view of poll watchers.
• Mail ballots are often scanned multiple times.
When the optical scanner rejects a ballot it is necessary to rescan the ballot either after the ballot has been redone by election officials, or by simply reinserting the ballot into the scanner in a different orientation. Thus, the ballot count may easily become confused and the election arithmetic uninterpretable. This is particularly true in small jurisdictions, special elections, or with inexperienced, corrupt, or incompetent election officials. Thus, the door to manipulating the vote count is left wide open.
• Voter has no idea whether their ballot was received and counted as marked.
Unless the voter calls the county clerk after the election they have no idea whether their ballot was received in time to be counted in the election. Even if their ballot was received they have no idea whether it was counted as marked.
• Loss of secret ballot.
Mail ballot envelopes are often opened and enclosed ballots reviewed by the same person, or by election judges sitting at the same table. Thus, it is relatively easy to determine who voted a particular ballot and how they voted.
In addition to the issues outlined above, counting mail ballots with electronic voting machines using optical scan methods leads to another set of problems. The more common ones known are listed below.
Note that there is a considerable difference in the requirements for a machine to scan a few hundred ballots, with just one or two ballot styles, in a precinct compared with the necessity of accurately and reliably scanning hundreds of thousands of ballots, with tens or hundreds of ballot styles, in mail in elections. An optical scanner that performs flawlessly in a precinct is much more likely to fail, or produce incorrect results when used to count ballots in the more demanding production environment of a mail in/absentee election.
However, as the ballots are counted in the "back room" at the county or city clerk's office, a concerted effort is often made to cover up problems and only the most obvious and egregious errors become public.
• Marking devices, i.e., pencil or pen, wrong ink color, mark intensity, etc., on paper ballots not recognized and votes are not counted by scanner. For an excellent review of such problems see the Statement regarding the optical mark-sense tabulators in Maricopa County, Arizona by Prof. Douglas Jones.
• Scanner sensitivity not properly calibrated or tested prior to election.
• Scanner heads become dirty or scratched and introduce reading errors. For example, voters at home may use correction fluid on their ballot that may wipe off on the read head of the scanner, or food gets spilled on the ballot that transfers to the scanner. This is a particular problem with mail elections where tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots may be scanned with a single machine.
• Defects in scanner cause apparent overvoting and votes are not counted.
• Double-sided ballots not sufficiently opaque and marks on opposite side bleed through particularly if wrong marking instrument, e.g. a Sharpie, is used.
• Overvoting rejection may be turned off (also used to discriminate against minority voters).
• Candidates and issues omitted when ballot is scanned.
• Ballots with straight-party votes may not be counted correctly.
• Ballots don't fit scanner, or cannot be, or are not read by scanner.
• Ballots jam often due to high humidity.
• Computer identifies voter thus preventing secret ballot (Hart Intercivic machines).
• Uncertified, untested, or wrong software, firmware, and hardware installed.
• Computers not programmed correctly and may be reprogrammed during election.
• Ballots have toner or ink transferred while folded and sacked for mailing and scanner reads smudge as vote or overvote.
• Fold in absentee or mail ballots read as vote or overvote.
We asked, you answered. Loud and clear. The winner of our presidential poll is Senator Barack Obama, with 73.2% of the 2,760 votes cast.
As much as the margin of victory, we were impressed by the passion of Obama voters and their excitement about the future. In a world where cynicism about politics has become the norm, it is refreshing to see optimism, hope, and the belief that each of us can make a difference. Or, to paraphrase Senator Obama's comments last week: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."
It's a particular joy to watch the young people who are engaged in this campaign, many of whom cut their political teeth in Howard Dean's campaign. They're not just talking, they're assuming a leadership role. We couldn't be prouder.
But it's not just young people. One slightly older Obama supporter told us:
"I'm a 73-year-old Yellow Dog Democrat and this is the first time I have been truly excited with a candidate for president since 1960."
We understand. We're "fired up and ready to go" ourselves, and looking forward to working with everyone - regardless of your preference in the poll - to elect a Democrat in November.
Erik Azulay, Glen Maxey, Mark McCulloch, Karl-Thomas Musselman, and Fran Vincent
