Don't standardize election systems

Let counties work out the kinks

Opinion    Rocky Mountain News   October 5, 2005

There is no single voting system in use in Colorado, at least not yet, and that's probably a good thing.

If the states are the laboratory of democracy within the federal system, allowing experimentation and variation, then counties serve the same purpose within the states.    
 
There is no nationwide consensus on what is the best voting system, and rapidly advancing technology is likely to keep this true for years to come.

Colorado is using three major systems this off-year election to handle the voting on Referendums C and D and on numerous local issues and races.

In Denver and El Paso counties, for instance, traditional precinct locations will be used on election day.

Three other counties, Adams, Weld and Otero, have joined Larimer in using so-called vote centers. These are sort of super precincts, which the counties love because fewer locations mean lower staffing costs. But they can also be reasonably convenient to voters, if operated well.

A citizen can go to any of them within the county and vote, since they're all linked electronically. If you work far from home, for instance, you can go to a location near your office during lunch hour instead of having to return to your neighborhood. Of course, with voting centers there likely won't be a location in your neighborhood to begin with.

Like it or not, voting centers are like the modern precinct caucus. Every neighborhood used to have its own caucus. But it's not that way any more. To save money - and to satisfy the demands of the Americans with Disabilities Act - many precincts are lumped together at a single school, church or other community center. Voting centers simply continue that trend.

But the most popular voting method, at least within the Denver metro area and in Mesa County, is the all-mail-ballot system. It will be employed by Arapahoe, Boulder, Douglas and Jefferson counties.

People like mail ballots because they can contemplate them at leisure in their homes rather than feel the pressure of a line behind them at the polling place. But there have been legitimate security and fraud concerns, which is why the legislature hasn't authorized them for general elections.

This year state law requires that counties using mail ballots have a database of signatures so the one on the return envelope can be checked. Denver hasn't completed its database, which is why mail ballots there are out of the question.

Congress insinuated itself more than ever into the election process in the wake of the fiasco in Florida in 2000. It passed the Help America Vote Act, which when fully implemented imposes certain mandates like ID cards and provisional ballots, and requires a lot more election oversight.

We hope Congress doesn't decide to mandate a specific voting system, too. Whatever it chose would probably be out of date by the time it went into effect.

For instance, many people like electronic voting machines, at least those models that also create a paper trail. But by the time those are perfected, someone will probably come up with a system that enables you to vote by computer from home.

You can get money from an ATM anywhere in the world, so perhaps remote-location voting is not so far behind.