More mail-in elections proposed

By John Woolfolk  San Jose Mercury News  17 May 2005

The latest proposal to make voting in California easier and more reliable doesn't involve touch-screens, software or machines worth more than your car.

Burned by voting machine problems, the state that spawned the computer revolution may turn instead to snail mail in hopes of boosting voter participation, lowering election costs, ensuring verifiable results and guarding against fraud.

Inspired by Oregon, where voters in 1998 switched to mail-in ballots for all elections, California Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, has written a bill that would allow San Mateo, Santa Cruz and five other counties to vote mostly by mail through 2010.

Yet Santa Clara County which just successfully completed its first large-scale election by mail isn't one of them.

``This program makes voting convenient and saves money for counties because they do not have to set up traditional polling places,'' said Liu, whose bill, AB 867, will be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

Voting by mail is essentially absentee balloting on a large scale. Instead of opening polling places in dozens of precincts, election officials mail a ballot to every registered voter. They would then have 29 days to either mail it back or it off with election officials.

If Liu's bill is approved, San Benito, Calaveras, Mendocino, Sierra and Ventura counties also would vote by mail. Liu initially considered using just three counties in the mail-voting experiment, but after 18 begged to be included, she said she expanded the list to seven.

Santa Clara County wasn't among those clamoring to join. Though the county library district's Measure A mail-in ballot election went off without a hitch, officials aren't about to abandon the 5,500 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines they bought for $18 million in 2003, said registrar spokeswoman Elma Rosas.

``When you look at the touch-screen voting system, it's very accessible,'' Rosas said. ``People seem very receptive. And we still have voters who like to go to their polling places.''

Not everyone is so enamored. During last year's primary election, electronic voting machine glitches and poll-worker confusion kept thousands of California voters from casting the correct ballot, or any at all.

Then-Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified electronic voting machines used in 14 counties. One touch-screen maker Diebold Election Systems of Ohio was fined $2.6 million in November after California's state attorney general found company officials lied about equipment sold in the state.

Such problems convinced election officials in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties that electronic voting isn't ready for prime time.

``At first glance this seemed like the wave of the future,'' said Santa Cruz County Elections Manager Gail Pellerin. ``Then there were these significant and real concerns.''

An added worry for counties like San Mateo and Santa Cruz that use optically scanned ballot systems is that they don't comply with the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act standards. That would force those counties to spend millions of dollars on new touch-screen voting machines that meet the requirements, and they believe there are few to choose from.

Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties see the vote-by-mail bill as a way out of that fix.

``What I'd like to do is get this bill passed and let the marketplace for new voting technology mature,'' said Warren Slocum, San Mateo County's chief elections officer.

Mail voting in California was first tried in Monterey County in 1977, and has since been used in hundreds of elections. But California law now doesn't allow it for primary and general elections. Monterey County this year is concluding a four-year trial of mail voting for any election.

Oregon, the only state to adopt all-mail voting, has reported favorable results. A University of Oregon survey in 2003 found that eight in 10 voters preferred voting by mail. A third of those surveyed said it made them more likely to vote, especially women, the disabled, and the young. Yet the higher turnout produced no partisan advantage, and the election cost a third to half as much as those with polling places.

Santa Clara County's library measure, which passed on May 3 with 72 percent support, drew ballots from 36 percent of the 200,000 registered voters. Turnout at polling places for similar special elections before that had ranged from 10 to 30 percent, Rosas said.

Supporters say mailed ballots in California are less vulnerable to fraud because signatures on voters' envelopes are checked with those on their registration cards. Voters who sign in at polling places don't have their signatures checked.

Even so, fraud has been a significant concern with mail voting in the past. For example, evidence of substantial absentee ballot fraud led a judge to overturn the 1997 Miami mayoral election.

Liu's bill has met no organized opposition so far, according to the legislative analyst. Alfie Charles, spokesman for Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems, which also makes optical-scan voting equipment used for absentee mail-in ballots, has no position on the bill.