A
Response to Madeline Rawley’s article in the Coalition for Voting Integrity
News and Opinion
Dear Ms. Rawley;
This is in response to: The Elimination of Polling Places through Adoption of
No-Excuse Absentee Ballots—the First Step to All Mail-In Voting
I address your very weak arguments in opposing mail-in voting in Pennsylvania in which you seek to maintain the status-quo rather than eliminate the primary cause of endemic election fraud – unverifiable voting machines.
You wrote:
As
reported last month, the German Supreme Court ruled last year that the use of
electronic voting machines in elections in Germany was unconstitutional because
it violates the constitutional mandate that “all aspects of the election
process must be available for public scrutiny.”
Meanwhile, here in Bucks County, we still must vote on these unreliable and
unverifiable electronic machines. However, we do have very limited public
scrutiny as poll workers and poll watchers can watch absentee paper ballots
counted by hand and observe their tabulation with machine counts in the polling
place on election night. This tiny window of public scrutiny could disappear if
Pennsylvania ever adopts no-excuse absentee ballots as 27 states have. (It may
take a constitutional amendment.) No-excuse absentee ballots seem to be the
first step to the elimination of polling places. In two states, Oregon and
Washington, there are no polling places. All voters drop off or mail in their
ballots.
Ms.
Rawley, you agree that the machines are unreliable and unverifiable. But then you go off track: “this tiny window
of public scrutiny will disappear” … if PA goes to “no-excuse” absentee
ballots. You are fearful that polling places would be eliminated as they have
been in WA and OR, the only states with 100% mail-in ballots.
One example of how a no-excuse absentee ballot voting state may turn into an
all mail-in state can be seen in California. In their recent primary, in San
Joaquin County, 49% of the voters sent in no-excuse absentee ballots. A county
grand jury concluded that there was no longer a need for polling places and
issued a call for all mail-in voting. Election officials like no-excuse
absentee ballot voting because they don’t like having the public looking over
their shoulders and finding poll workers so they emphasize possible cost savings.
Election
officials “don’t like having the public looking over their shoulders and
finding poll workers so they emphasize possible cost savings”? You can’t be serious. First of all, cost
savings are guaranteed. Compare to the cost of installing and maintaining
voting machines. Corrupt election officials all over the country (including PA)
installed unverifiable touch screens without doing a credible hardware and software inspection.
Here in Pennsylvania, well-intentioned groups
like Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and minority and disability
organizations are in favor of no-excuse absentee ballots. These groups have not
focused on the loss of public scrutiny that results when ballots are mailed in,
kept, and counted at the courthouse. They are motivated by their belief that
this method of voting will increase voter turnout. Most research studies have
shown that voter turnout does not increase substantially; some studies have
shown that there is no increase.
Voter
turnout has increased substantially in OR since it
changed to mail-in ballots in 1998. In the three
elections from 1988 to 1996, it had a 7% average uncounted vote rate. In the
three elections from 2000 to 2008, the rate was reduced to 1.5%.
The “well-intentioned” groups in PA that are in favor of
no-excuse “absentees” have not “focused” on the loss of “public scrutiny”
because the chain
of custody can be nearly foolproof if election officials want it to be – as in
OR and WA. Mail-in ballots are
scanned and counted by computers and then precincts are randomly selected for
hand-recounts to confirm the machine counts. According to Oregon
officials, there
has never been a discrepancy of even a single vote between the hand-count and
machine-count.
In 1992, Oregon had a whopping 13.6% unadjusted exit poll
discrepancy (WPE).
That was surely one of the reasons why the state mandated a 100% paper ballot
voting system in 1998 (either mail-in or in-person). The results speak for
themselves. In Oregon, unlike PA and
most other states, the recorded vote has closely matched the True Vote. Here is
the evidence:
In 2000, Gore won the recorded national vote by 48.4-47.9%.
Nader et al had 6.5%. Gore won the unadjusted aggregate state exit polls by
49.4-46.9%, a small 2.0% within precinct
discrepancy. Gore won Oregon by 47.0-46.5%, matching his 0.5%
recorded vote margin.
In 2004, Bush won the national recorded vote by 50.7-48.3%. Kerry won the unadjusted aggregate state exit polls by 52-47%, a large 7.4% WPE.
Kerry won Oregon by 51.4-47.2%, a close match to his
52.2% share in the exit pollster telephone survey in Oregon. In Pennsylvania,
Kerry had 55.1% in the unadjusted exit poll but only 50.9% in the recorded vote
- a whopping 8.4% WPE.
The 2004 National Exit Poll indicated that returning Nader voters broke for Kerry over Bush by a whopping 65-13%. Assuming an equal defection of returning Gore and Bush voters, returning Nader voters accounted for the 3.7% increase in Kerry’s Oregon margin over Gore. The numbers add up.
Kerry led the unadjusted exit
polls in virtually every Battleground state. He led in OH, FL, NM, IA, VA and
CO but lost them all. Oregon was the only Battleground state in which Kerry
did better than Gore. Is it just a coincidence that OR was the only 100% paper
ballot state?
It is much more convenient to vote in your pajamas then to
stand for hours waiting to vote and then possibly see it switched on the
screen. And even if the vote appears to have been properly recorded, there is
no way of knowing if malicious software has switched the vote at the DRE or if
it will be miscounted later at remote central tabulators in cyberspace. The only deterrent to electronic fraud is a
mandated hand-count of paper ballots in the required number of
randomly-selected precincts in order to meet a desired statistical level of
confidence.
For full transparency, there must be a paper ballot for each
and every vote
cast. DRE voting machines should be thrown away. Optical scanners
produce a paper ballot, but election officials resort to the bogus claim that a
hand count would not be efficient - even though they would only be required in
a subset of (randomly selected) precincts. Oregon’s random hand counts are a powerful deterrent against
election fraud. Now Washington will surely follow suit.
Another unfortunate effect of
no-excuse absentee ballot voting is that voter fraud and intimidation may
occur. In a primary election this year in New
Jersey, which has no-excuse absentee voting, 49 unopened and uncounted absentee
ballots mysteriously turned up in a closet in the courthouse when a recount in
a close election was requested. (This is not unusual.) The recount produced a
new winner. An investigation found that the49 ballots had been delivered by
three men. Some contacted voters denied having voted. The on-going
investigation with its finding of fraud and intimidation is detailed in these
newspaper articles here and here.
Were voting machines used in
that “close” election – and if they were how did you verify those votes? Voter fraud
is a canard; it is virtually non-existent. On the other hand, election
fraud and intimidation on the part of election officials is systemic.
In addition to this threat to election integrity, the elimination of polling place voting reduces the sense of community that develops when voters meet poll workers and other voters from their neighborhood in the polling place. If citizens vote at home and the ballots are handled by anonymous workers and counted by machine in the courthouse, not only is public scrutiny lost and opportunities for fraud increased, but a sense of community disappears.
You are concerned that eliminating polling places will
somehow detract from the “sense of community” that is created as a result of voting? Your priorities are mixed
up. If you want a “sense of community” why don’t you organize community events,
like town-hall meetings? Votiing is not a “community event”; it is (or should
be) an exercise in democracy in which the votes are properly counted – and verifiable. The electronic voting machines in PA do
neither.
Voting in public at your
neighborhood polling place is needed in our increasingly isolated society where
people interact with screens and phone instead of other people. In Pennsylvania today, if a person is not able to come
to the polling place due to his or her duty to be elsewhere on election day or
a physical disability, he or she can vote by absentee ballot. Allowing everyone
to vote by mail is convenient, but is that the value that should take
pre-eminence in a democracy when some of our citizens have put their bodies on
the line for our democracy? Why can’t voters, in order to preserve the
integrity of the election process, express their belief in democracy by going
physically to a polling place two days a year?
Express their belief by going to a polling place where they can’t be sure that their vote will be counted fairly? It would be better if they just stayed home, filled out a paper ballot and then mailed or delivered it in person – and held election official’s feet to the fire by making sure they have a documented policy to insure a foolproof chain of custody – as they do in Oregon.
You confuse priorities by resorting to a phony concern of “isolation”. The concern that millions of voters have is from not knowing if their votes were correctly counted. They are well aware that voting machine “glitches” and exit poll anomalies have favored the GOP candidate over 90% of the time. In 2004 the exit poll discrepancy was just 2% in paper ballot precincts, 7% in electronic voting machine precincts and 12% in lever precincts. What does that tell you?
Ms. Rawley, are
you for true voting integrity or the status-quo?