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This is part two of a two-part series evaluating absentee ballots, which are being used more and more often. The first part focused on their advantages. This second part will focus on their disadvantages.
Absentee Ballot
The previous part discussed the two main advantages of absentee ballots: absentee ballots make it easier to vote and enable voters to have more information about obscure ballot measures and races.
Let’s look at the disadvantages. Actually, there’s only one big disadvantage of absentee ballots: the potential for fraud or voter intimidation.
With in-person voting voter intimidation is quite difficult. Nobody can see how a voter fills in the ballot in the voting booth. Somebody who attempted to see how a voter fills his or her ballot would immediately be arrested. So it’s quite difficult to influence voters with in-person voting.
Not so with absentee ballots. With absentee ballots, the burden of keeping the ballot from prying eyes falls on the voter. The voter is supposed to keep the ballot secret and hidden, rather than the government. People are allowed to “guide” voters or “help” them fill out the ballot. Of course, the guide or helper can pressure a voter to fill out the ballot “correctly.” That’s called voter intimidation.
This is not just hypothetical. It’s happened before. One hears stories of how in the 2008 presidential election Obama’s campaign held “voter parties” where supporters would fill out their absentee ballots together. One shudders to think what would have happened to a supporter who decided to vote Republican in a local race.
There’s also a high potential of fraud. In-person voter fraud requires a person to actually walk up to the voting station and impersonate a voter. Absentee ballot fraud just requires good signature-faking skills. It’s quite easy to catch a person impersonating a voter, but practically impossible to catch a person impersonating a voter’s signature.
That is the great disadvantage of absentee ballots: it’s much easier to do unethical things with them.
–inoljt
Photo by micala under Creative Commons license.
3 Comments
Having voted early my concerns were, two.
1) The person opening my AB envelope and or placing the ballot for tally can see how I voted. (Unless procedure is in place, verified and witness?)
2) How do I know my ballot was actually tallied and not just tossed?
No confirmation exists that my “vote” was counted as with paying a bill on line? I simply don’t know?
In my community the “town clerk,” oversees voting and does a great job. One must sign affidavit to obtain an AB, for one’s self or for a family member. The convenience of AB far outweighs the fear of fraud or unethical behavior. A paper trail does exist and if fraud is suspected, investigate and prosecute.
“…but practically impossible to catch a person impersonating a voter’s signature.” Signatures are impersonated all the time. When they don’t match under scrutiny, people get caught and people go to jail. Fraud!
In our state, and in a previous state where I voted absentee, there are two envelopes, one containing the signature for verification, and a second envelope inside that one containing the ballot and upon which there are no identifying marks. Once the identification of the voter procedure has been done (matching signatures, verifying registration, address, precinct, etc), the inside envelope is removed from the envelope containing all the identifyinig information. The ballot is then placed into another box and taken to a different location where it is counted. It is now anonymous – it cannot be identifyed with a specific voter. So your concern about a worker being able to see how “you” voted is not a concern.
There are now two states, Oregon and Washington, who do their entire elections by mail only (essentially what absentee ballots do by proxy).
They use a check-in system where the number on the top of the ballot can be checked on the internet later after you mailed it to see if it has been “checked in”. I believe some other places have this feature for absentee ballots as well. You should check with your county to see if this is available for your county.
All of this woe is me about the Post Office losing the mail is a bunch of hooey. 99.99% of it is myth and old wives tales, especially considering that ballot envelopes are large, require special handling, in some cases, extra postage, it is all local mail, and the Post Office employees are alert to the fact that it is election season and that these very clearly marked and obvious envelopes are priority handling.
lokywoky: Sounds like a good system!
JamesJoyce: I think that you can actually check your county website to see if your ballot was submitted; they have a record of when you voted.