America mails it in

Absentee ballots are a popular prescription for frenzied demands of work and family, but with convenience come concerns

By Ian Hoffman - STAFF WRITER  Tri-Valley Herald    24 October 2004

A growing chorus is suggesting American voters don't necessarily need to go to the polls Nov. 2 but rather elect the leader of the free world from the comfort of their own homes.

Like politics, the act of voting makes for strange bedfellows. Democrats and Republicans, every branch of the U.S. military, critics of electronic voting and elections officials who are its fiercest defenders all have found common cause in the commonest tool of democratic choice: the mail-in ballot.

Most Americans apparently don't need telling: Nationwide, elections officials are seeing a remarkable surge in voters signing up to vote by mail.

They're asking to wield democracy at a time of their own choosing, with a paper ballot that can be recounted. But the migration of American voters from the polls to the living room and kitchen table heightens concern that mail-in voting can mean more uncounted ballots, more potential for vote manipulation and more of a chance that Americans won't know the victor for days or weeks after Nov. 2.

Kimball Brace, president of the Washington, D.C. consulting firm, Election Data Services, calls the potential for spoiled ballots ``the one big fallacy that the people pushing absentees haven't thought about.''

In California alone, the number of voters demanding a mail-in, absentee ballot has skyrocketed 10-fold since the 2000 election to more than 3 million, or 17.3 percent of registered voters as of late September. And the pace is accelerating. Just since the March primary, mail-in voters have doubled in Alameda and San Mateo counties. More than half of Sonoma's voters asked for absentee ballots. Thousands more are pouring in as the Oct. 26 absentee signup deadline approaches.

``It's dramatic,'' said Tony Miller, special counsel to California's elections chief. ``It indicates huge numbers of people are becoming regular absentee voters.''

By and large, it's not for the reason that Democrats and Republicans are pushing absentee voting - to lock in the decided vote so allies of President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. John Kerry can target their money and energies on undecided voters. Michigan voters recently got a recorded phone message from President Bush asking whether they had gotten their absentee ballot yet.

Nor is the surge in absentee voting clearly attributable to distrust of touchscreen voting machines and the desire for a paper alternative that can be recounted, if necessary.

Rather, it seems, Americans are bringing a nesting instinct for leisure and convenience to one of the highest stakes elections in a generation. Voting by mail is the popular prescription for longer, more complex ballots and the frenzied demands of work and family life.

``They can sit down with a voter guide or a newspaper and make their decisions deliberately,'' said Doug Chapin, head of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting reform information.

``It's more convenient,'' said University of Michigan political scientist Michael Traugott. ``And older people often find it more comfortable, easier to vote at home with an absentee ballot than to stand in line and fumble with a machine.''

The vote-by-mail movement could inject a dose of delay and unpredictability into elections. As much as a third of voters could escape exit pollsters that TV networks and wire services on for predictions, leaving the outcome to the mailbox, not the polls.

Many mail-in ballots arrive on Election Day but aren't counted until afterward, so winners in close races may not be known for days or weeks after the election.

``The numbers in many states are clearly large enough that a close election, down in the 1 or 2 percent range, could be decided by the absentee vote,'' said Caltech political scientist R. Michael Alvarez, co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.

But scholars of American voting have a caution: Mail-in voting comes with its own, low-tech problems that demand extra care from voters to ensure their vote is counted.

Formal scientific studies are few, but available evidence suggests the chances of having a mail-in vote go uncounted are significant.

The reason is simple: Voters in polling places who make a mistake marking their ballots or miss a race usually are alerted and get a second chance. Ballot scanners in precincts are programmed to kick back ballots with errors. But not so with mail-in ballots that arrive at the county seat for recording and counting.

``What you lose by absentee voting is the ability to have a machine tell you if you've made a mistake,'' said University of Utah political scientist Thad Hall. ``That's a very valuable tool to have.''

``You really do have to be more careful voting absentee because you don't get a second chance,'' said Brace of Election Data Services.

Mail-in ballots can be marked improperly or with the wrong inks. They can be lost or mangled in what one elections official called the ``postal mutilation system.'' They can arrive too late or missing the ballot signature. They also can arrive stained by coffee and wine or encrusted with spaghetti sauce. As such, absentees offer a window on the private habits of the body politic. But if elections officials can't read a vote, they can't discern voter intent.

Unless elections officials catch the problem in time to send another ballot to the voter or can recreate the ballot, one or more of a voter's choices can be discarded.

The chances that a mailed vote won't be counted are difficult to assess but range from almost 1 percent to more than 7 percent, or one to seven votes uncounted out of every 100 cast for president or other top-of-ticket candiates. The few studies on the subject, many of them never published, show wide variability from state to state, even precinct to precinct.

Newspaper investigations and some scientific studies of Florida's 2000 election found evidence that centrally scanned ballots such as absentees were discarded at higher rates due to overvoting - marking too many choices in a race - and undervoting or marking too few.

A Washington Post analysis found the effect especially marked in heavily African-American precincts; other studies found a correlation with socioeconomic status and education.

Brace's study of Florida counties found that centrally scanned ballots such as absentees show five times the number of combined undervotes and overvotes. Brace saw significant percentages of absentee overvotes in Palm Beach County, home of the notorious butterfly ballot, and in Duval County, where the presidential race spilled into multiple columns.

That suggested a poor ballot design by elections officials and voting-system vendors. When those flaws caused voter errors, polling place scanners caught it, but the mistaken votes on mailed-in ballots were simply discarded.

Alvarez and elections officials said missing signatures and late arrival play a more prominent role in the discarding of absentee ballots, leaving as much as 1-2 percent uncounted, especially when new voters are casting absentee ballots.

``I think it's a newer voter,'' said Contra Costa County voter registrar Steve Weir. ``It's a voter that doesn't have the age, education or experience of voting on that system and may be doing it wrong.''

The surge in new mail-in voters could increase the discard rate in 2004.

``We may see more mistakes in absentee ballots as we go forward,'' Alvarez said. ``But as long as voters take time to really check their ballots and their signature carefully, there should be no concern about having your vote counted at all.''

In many ways, soaring U.S. interest in mail-in voting has clear benefits. In Oregon, studies show better turnout and higher voter satisfaction since voters chose in 1998 to scrap polling places and conduct all votes by mail.

Voters also can take their time studying the issues and marking their ballots. ``You have the ballot in your hand as long as you want. Voters can sit at the kitchen table, study up and vote another day,'' said David Tom, elections division manager in San Mateo County. ``We hope voters are casting their votes as they become comfortable with their votes.''

Since most elections officials can begin processing and recording mail-in ballots before Election Day, absentee voting spreads their workload over more time. Beyond its voter popularity, that's one reason that elections officials promote it.

``That's the untold secret of absentee voting,'' said Caltech's Alvarez. In turn, mail-in voting can relieve pressure at the polls, lessening the chance that voters will encounter long lines and walk away.

Mail-in ballots also can be recounted, unlike electronic ballots.

``We're encouraging people to vote on systems that actually allow a recount so if there are problems, there's a better chance we'll be able to reconstruct the election,'' said Matt Zimmerman, staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. It is one of many groups that see paperless touchscreen voting, powered by secret software, as unreliable and unverifiable. ``Given the options, I would much rather vote on paper than a touchscreen,'' Zimmerman said.

The nonprofit California Voter Foundation, based in Davis, urged voters in e-voting counties to cast absentee ballots or request and fill out a paper provisional ballot at the polling place.

``For myself and I hope a lot of voters in California, I would want to get my ballot on paper rather than subject my vote to secret software that can't be verified,'' said foundation president Kim Alexander.

That presents voters with choices: Do they bank on getting the most political clout in the initial vote count or safeguarding their vote for a recount?

``If you were concerned about closeness and the possibility of a recount, then you give serious thought to an absentee ballot because it's the most straightforward way to do a recount,'' said Michigan's Traugott.

Mail-in ballots tend to pass through more hands, something for voters to think about if they don't want to trust in the unseen machinery of elections.

``Either you're going to trust the system or you're not going to trust the system,'' said MIT political scientist Stephen Ansolabehere. ``If you're fundamentally mistrustful of the system, I don't see that absentee voting is going to change a lot.''