Asking voters to go to the polls and show a valid photo ID

I’d like to see D.Pantload and K.Lopload spend several hours in line at a polling place, as happened in minority precincts and campus precincts of Ohio in 2004, then ask them if they’d like to consider.

Interestingly, I’m with Jesse on this.  I think we should mebbe try a “show of hands” or “honk for Barack” system instead.

There’s actually far more documented fraud with absentee ballots than there has ever been at the polling place.  That’s where efforts should have been concentrated, but absentee ballots often go Republican, so they haven’t been willing to do anything about it.

I’m not sure what preventive measures could be taken, though.  Having someone countersign the outside of the envelope?  But even that could be faked.

Vote-by-mail has also been recommended as a way to avoid those pesky electronic voting “errors” which have tended to favor Republican candidates. At the very least, somebody at the elections office has a tangible paper copy of your ballot that can be re-counted by hand if necessary.

I’m a permanent California vote-by-mail person for that reason. Of course my faith ends when I put that ballot in the mailbox (will it be dumped in the bay or shredded? scanned but results tallied incorrectly? which sham democracy fantasy do I want to entertain today?), but it’s a tiny bit less paranoia-inducing than the electronic variety.

It’s also super easy and convenient. If only they could mail your little “I Voted” sticker so you don’t look like a schlub on election day.

In Pima County, Arizona our recent primary had about 750 people who tried to vote both absentee and by showing up.  It may have been actual attempts at fraud, and many of those who did so were elderly.  Which means some may have forgotten that they turned in absentee votes, but it’s also possible that someone stole some mail and sent some ballots in.  With the ability to register and request absentee ballots online, it’s not hard to see how organized fraud could occur.

If we can get something to be trustworthy most of the time, someone will be sure to fuck it up.

Jesse, you pretty well just summed up the entirety of the right’s obsession with “voter fraud”.  It’s not about integrity and never had been; it’s always been about making sure that the “untrustworthy” don’t get their votes counted.  And we know they’re trying it again this year.

But if they manage to fuck enough people over with their tricks, they know it’s not going to end well.

They may have a point about fraudulent absentee ballots, though.  As I recall, postdated absentee ballots from US military overseas kept turning up during the November 2000 Florida recount.

Oh, but those were for the Republican.  Couldn’t have been fraudulent.

What, there’s something wrong with restricting the franchise to able-bodied people who are in their home precinct at the time of the ballot and have jobs that permit them to spend an indeterminate number of hours at a polling place during open hours. Pshaw!

Although you can do fraud with mail-in ballots, it’s the kind of thing that has to be done retail rather than wholesale.

Four years ago, my late grandmother was an absentee voter. (She wasn’t my late grandmother then! She was still alive.) Why? She was 92 and had limited mobility, but she damn well wanted to vote against George Bush.

Who else likes to vote with absentee ballots? Younger people with limited mobility. People with business trips planned for that day. Stay-at-home parents with babies and no babysitters. People with crazy work hours. People whose employers won’t make it easy for them to find time to vote. People who have little time between work and family obligations. People with chronic illnesses that make possibly standing in line for a couple hours burdensome. People who’ve scheduled an elective surgery for right around election day. Overseas expats who aren’t in the military or diplomatic corps. Is it patriotic to crap all over these groups of people? I say no.

As someone like cycles, I’m a MO resident living in CA and I’m proud to say I voted via absentee ballot. Also like cycles I worry what *really* happens to my ballot but I do like the paper trail that hopefully I’m leaving and this year MO might be up in the air as a swingstate so I felt my vote was more needed there than in CA.

And MO has a rule where you have to have a notary republic take your ID to make sure it’s you and then be present when you vote and then put their stamp on it. I know it’s not like this in every state but there are states that do require some form of proof of ID when you do absentee balloting so there is that.

Man, I could tell you a million stories about the overseas military vote. I know a chief in the Navy who was handed one back in the early ‘90s that was already filled out. Vote and all. He refused to sign it.

I could understand wanting to restrict absentee voting to people who are actually going to be absent, provided there’s a generous window open for early voting and plenty of accessible places at which one can vote during that window.  I believe a number of states already do that, or make you affirm that you have circumstances which limit your mobility or will mean you’re physically incapacitated during that time frame. 

But yeah, that’s not what people who make noise about zomg who really filled them out? tend to be concerned about.  The idea that there are masses of people fraudulently requesting absentee ballots and then swiping them out of mailboxes and forging signatures well enough to pass the folks at the elections office who check them against registrations (all with enough organization to influence an election but without being busted) is somewhat more credible than the idea of these same people doing it in person, but not by much.  It’s kind of like the hundred guilty men going free rather than one innocent man being imprisoned—we accept the slightly greater possibility of fraud in order to not straight-up disenfranchise sizable chunks of the populace for whom mobility and/or access are an issue.  These things also give the system more flexibility, so that you don’t wind up with so many people encountering situational disenfranchisement due to incredibly long lines, broken machines, insufficient numbers of provisional ballots, etc.  Whenever you’re arguing for higher barriers to voting, you need to be damn sure that the threats you claim to be responding to a) actually exist and b) are greater than the threat posed by your solution.

Here’s an idea: why don’t we ask the people of Oregon about this whole Vote by Mail idea? They’ve been doing 100% mail in ballots since 1998, and they have done at least two studies about ballot integrity.

I haven’t had a chance to read through the studies yet, but I will refrain from pontificating about how horrible mail in ballots are until I do.

Unlike the schmucks at the NRO…

Asking voters to go to the polls and show a valid photo ID would put an end to many of these questions, and doing so is not too much to ask to maintain the integrity of our democracy.

...aside from the wealth of evidence from 2000 and 2004 that proves this statement to be a lie on its face (given the lack of integrity that those elections suggest), I can only assume that we wild-eyed radicals out here in the remote western wilderness known as Orygun can only be assumed - under the construct of NRO - to be the modern electoral equivalent of the Barbary Coast Pirates.  All of our ballots have been mail-in for several years without any meaningful complaints about vote fraud, which apparently can only suggest a massive bipartisan state-wide vote fraud conspiracy…

A lot of college students vote via absentee ballot too. And if I’m remembering correctly, college campuses have been polling pretty strongly for Obama. Methinks the the Republican Party is worried about us damn young’ins this year.

jon-
I live in Pima County and work in politics, but I hadn’t heard about the 750 trying to vote both by mail and in person.  Do you have a link?  I’m curious to find out more.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/local/99161

The number was 372 rather than 750, but it’s still big enough to warrant at least some investigation.  I heard the story reported on the radio rather than in a written form, so the doubling of the number was my fault (though there may have been about 750 votes to look at if the people voted twice.)

Still, the fact remains that some of the voters may have forgotten they voted, some may have had mail stolen, and some may have just tried to pull a fast one.  But I can’t argue with anyone who wants to figure out which are which, nor am I very worried that someone is actually checking this out.  I am worried, however, that this kind of thing makes close elections suspect.  That’s bad for our democracy, bad for our trust in it, and very bad for those who lose close elections and will never know if they actually lost.  I don’t mind someone winning by a single vote as long as it’s an honest count, but I do mind someone losing by any amount of votes when there’s more than even a little bit of fishiness.

Who else likes to vote with absentee ballots?

Poll workers who will not be stationed at their own polling place. I’ve worked a bunch of elections, but this one will the first presidential one for me. It’s gonna be a long and exhausting day. But I think a good one. The precinct where I work is majority Democratic. There should be a good vibe.

OTOH, I voted Tuesday. I think I shook a little as I pressed the button for prez.

Early voting in Vegas is great!

You go to the mall (where a lot of the early voting takes place, but not the sole venues), sign in and give the pollsteristas your ZIP code so they can determine your precinct, and a machine is set for you.

No muss w/ going to your actual precinct, lines, time off from work, etc.

It’s very convenient as long as you can get to the polls . . . so to help with this, when I go back home to Vegas in a weekend or two I am volunteering to drive registered voters to early voting venues so they can vote.

It’s a beautiful and relatively functional system, imex

The idea that there are masses of people fraudulently requesting absentee ballots and then swiping them out of mailboxes and forging signatures well enough to pass the folks at the elections office who check them against registrations (all with enough organization to influence an election but without being busted) is somewhat more credible than the idea of these same people doing it in person, but not by much.

Most of the absentee ballot fraud that’s been found has been places like nursing homes where it’s pretty easy to get hold of someone’s mail and forge their signature.  It’s not large-scale, but it does happen, unlike in-person voter fraud, which I still can’t figure out how it’s supposed to work.

Here in Los Angeles, I first have to report to my polling place and then figure out which of the three precincts I belong to.  (I think I’m usually the Green table.)  One person looks me up on their long list, confirms to a second person that I’m on there, and the second person hands me the roster to sign.  So I would need the names and addresses of all of the people I was pretending to be, plus I’d have to know which precinct they were in AND I’d have to make sure I wasn’t going to the same polling place twice in case one of the poll workers recognized me.  I suppose a really determined person could do it, but it’s a lot of work to figure out which precincts to hit, then figure out which addresses within that precinct either don’t have anyone registered at them so you can register at that address or figure out which registered voters aren’t going to show up the day of the election.

Seriously, the people who think that wide-scale in-person voter fraud is going on all the time have clearly never actually voted since they have no idea how the process works.

ACORN called me.  Now my teddy bear is registered to vote.

I have been voting by mail every year for the last 8 years since I became physically disabled. This is the first year that an “I Voted” sticker came in the mail with my ballot here in California. I suspect just that simple act will increase the number of ballots that are mailed back.
If you are voting absentee, remember to get your ballot in as early as possible so your vote can be counted with everyone else on election day. Otherwise it could be a week before your signature is verified and by then the election will more than likely already be called.

Yeah, they can kiss my expatriate ass, the ballot’s already flown for Obama. Still waiting on my state ballot though. It’ll be really nice to stop these Prop 8 fuckers in CA.

And yes, they despise democracy. They always have. Democracy is against their desires. Most people are liberal, don’t support fascism, and don’t support giving all the money to the elite. Low voter turnout is crucial to their ability to get elected. Ever.

Advanced, accessible polls.  That’s the ticket.

Canada makes voting ludicrously easy.  And I still voted at an advance poll.  Amongst other things it leaves me free to spend a large part of election day driving folks with mobility problems to the polls.

Early voting really is a wonderful thing. I live in Iowa and we have “satellite” voting stations all over town for weeks ahead of the elections - there are opportunities to vote at the public library, various supermarkets, the mall, Walmart, neighborhood community and recreation centers, etc. etc.  It feels so much better to hand over your ballot to proper election workers who are going to take it back to the county administration building at the end of the day than to shove it in a mailbox. I almost always wind up voting at the supermarket because they are set up there all day on the three Saturdays before the election.

My parents live in a state that has no early voting and requires a good reason to get an absentee ballot; they always get stuck standing in a long line to vote.

I’m going to find out what “early voting” in Nevada is like for the first time a week from today, when the polls open on the 18th.

Until this March, I lived in California, and for 13 years lived in Sonoma County. 9 of those years, and 5 before, were with my partner/boss Natasha, who was disabled. Until we got to Sonoma County we always both voted normally, but the first time she and I showed up at our assigned precinct in November ‘94, we found the building was inaccessible for her, and no one there gave a damn about it. So we drove to the state building in Santa Rosa, found the office of our state senator (then Mike Thompson, who is now a Congressman) and a staff member there advised Natasha to go vote at the County Registrar’s office, and then apply for a permanent absentee ballot. Natasha and her social workers eventually persuaded me to apply for an absentee ballot myself too.

As it happens, neither of us ever filled one out before election day; in my case because there were always several pesky offices and propositions or their local equivalent that I wanted more information on before deciding. But in California, last time I voted anyway, you could turn in your absentee ballot at any precinct within the county you resided in on election day. Or you could do what we usually did and go directly to the Registrar’s office. (In Santa Rosa, the Sonoma County Registrar eventually took to having a drive-in window, up an alarmingly steep curved ramp, so you didn’t even have to walk in…)

Doing that way, we got the little “I Voted!” stickers too. And while I could never be absolutely sure my Scantron, pencil-marked ballot was not misread or shredded the second I let go of it, I did tend to trust Sonoma County officials and anyway, I never trusted it to the mercies of the postal system. (Thus saving on stamps though of course spending more on gas, and personal wear and tear—but we tended to have business in Santa Rosa any day anyway). Nor did I have to worry it might be lost in transit to the place where it was counted, since I took it directly there myself.

I liked that system.

And I don’t see how it is more vulnerable to fraud than one requiring me to show up during a limited range of hours on one particular day at one particular location. With the absentee system, the Registrar sent out one each ballot to “Mark Harold Foxwell” and “Lane Natasha Littletree,” and got back one (or possibly zero, though I don’t think either of us missed a vote while we lived there) from each of us. If someone else intercepted my ballot, I sure would notice and complain about it, and I always had the option of doing what Natasha did in ‘94 and going to the Registrar’s office, where the ballot I filled out would trump anything else arriving in my name, because that is the vote where I would put my signature down. (For that matter, either of us could have voted at our assigned precinct instead, and then that would override our absentee ballot. If we had previously sent it in, then we’d be guilty of perjury of course).

How does requiring me, or still worse a disabled person attempting to enter a building with no access for her, to show up and sign in ink in the presence of a table full of people who never met us and don’t know us, more secure? If I filled out a registration fraudulently, I could just as well have fake ID. If I gave my name as “Shevek Wouter” on the registration forms and put a fake signature on it, I could just as well do that in the presence of the poll workers.

The fact is, the incidence of people attempting to take advantage of these sorts of loopholes is low. Perhaps this is because people are more honest than conventional wisdom assumes, perhaps it is because false addresses, fake ID, and stealing other people’s legitimate ballots can eventually be detected, and when the law catches up with someone who does this the consequences are severe.

I only wish the consequences were equally severe for officials who clearly overstep, for clear partisan purposes, in sweeping “purges” questionable at the outset and demonstratably disfranchising valid voters after the fact—which in the past couple decades have been a much larger problem.

Here’s an idea: why don’t we ask the people of Oregon about this whole Vote by Mail idea?

Thanks! Actually, it works quite well. First, it makes voting for traditional (young adult) college students simple (since we can vote either in our parent’s county or our college’s). It boosts turnout, which is nice since we have a really stupid amendment to our constitution saying that to increase taxes, a majority of registered voters must vote and a majority of the votes must be yes.

But, actually, it reduces fraud. It prevents politicking (unlawfully trying to influence voters at a polling place) and challenges based on race. It also (for the most part) prevents box stuffing, since there’s not a bunch of blank ballots hanging around at every station. And since you have to produce photo ID to get a mail-in ballot in the first place and the ballot is sent directly to your door (no P.O. boxes), the only way someone other than the voter will fill out the ballot is if the voter asks them to.

Why do these worrywort wingnuts hate our Military Personnel so much?  How the heck do they think people stationed away from home - including overseas - get their ballots in?

Another Oregon voter here—on the minus side, I miss that ritual of going to the polling place, standing in line and chatting w/other voters, getting my “I voted” sticker.

On the plus side, it has increased voter turnout.

And I have at least limited (n=1) proof of the safeguards: At one point I changed my signature to be more legible from a very illegible one that I’d developed as a teenager. As a nurse, I wanted my documentation to be readable. I had, however forgotten about this. I signed my ballot envelope with my new signature. I got a note in the mail saying that my signature didn’t match what they had on record. I think my vote was discarded. I went and re-registered with the new signature and haven’t had any problems since.

Another plus—in those crazy years where there are propositions in the double digits, it’s really nice to sit down with your ballot, your League of Women’s voter’s handout, voter’s pamphlet, and any other sources to help you figure out how you want to vote, rather than having to write it all down on a piece of paper that you may, or may not remember to take to the polls.