Protect Your Secret Ballot Meeting

Protect Our Secret Ballot
King County plans to adopt mail ballot tracking. This is more than envelope tracking. It adds a unique barcode to each ballot that is linked to the voter’s id. This eliminates the secret ballot, taking away all voter privacy. Unique barcodes on ballots are unconstitutional, illegal, and bad policy.

Tuesday May 1, 2007
7 pm – 9 pm

University Heights Center
Room 212 (second floor, middle of the building)
5031 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105

Sponsored by Washington Citizens for Fair Elections
http://www.wafairelections.org

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New Report on Vote By Mail, VBM Does Not Really Increase Turnout

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~tkousser/Will%20Vote-by-Mail%20Elections%20Increase%20Turnout.pdf

This report confirms many other reports that suggest that Vote-By Mail will not really increase turnout in the most important races, and now adds that it may actually DECREASE turnout in those races by up to 3%.

It also confirms that Vote-By Mail is being justified as a cost saving device.

The conclusion on pages 33 and 34 will give you a great sense of what the report is all about.

Kill This Bill, HR 811, aka “The Holt Bill”

Lots of people are speaking out against the Holt Bill. From Bev Harris, to Paul Lehto. Safe bet that putting the EAC in control of elections is a very bad idea.

Contact your Senators and urge them not to support Holt!

Why Mail Ballots Are a Bad Idea

Why Mail Ballots Are A Bad Idea by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.

http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-77.htm 

An intereting read as a primer on absentee ballot problems.

King County, WA, 13 Days of Vote Counting, Seattle Special Election, 2007

Above is a Screen Capture of King County’s own Election News Website, as of April 7th, 2007
http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/news/default.asp

It includes 10 days of headlines that nicely illustrate one of the many problems voting through the United States Postal Service… in Washington State the Ballot only need be postmarked by election day. Therefore the election can drag on for many days after the official election day. In fact, in King County, on March 26th, 2007, the County’s Election News Website reports that an additional 221 votes were added to the County’s total a full 13 days after the election.

The other headlines read of a 2 week rollercoaster of changing vote totals:

March 14: Second day of ballot counting

March 15: Third day of ballot counting, 45 percent of Seattle ballots returned

March 16: More than 14,000 ballots added to vote totals

March 19: Nearly 3,000 more mail ballots added to vote totals

March 20: Mail ballots still trickling in one week after election day; 395 mail ballots added to vote totals

March 21: Two hundred mail ballots added to vote totals

March 23: Four hundred mail ballots added to vote totals

March 26: Results posted early today; 221 mail ballots added to vote totals

And then…. my favorite part is the last headline in the list:

March 28: Seattle’s first all-mail election a success

Hurray for Seattle… it took 2 weeks to have your votes counted!

That’s interesting, Sam Reed thinks that Vote-By Mail will make tallying election results faster:

http://www.secstate.wa.gov/office/osos_news.aspx?i=gp6Ec29NLGVa6LrnVMk2gg%3D%3Da

On election night, vote by mail counties will be able to produce results promptly. Poll site counties must wait for poll sites to report in, some of which require long drives to the tabulation center. All mail counties will have already processed all the vote by mail ballots received before Election Day. At 8:00pm on election night, mail counties will be able to hit the tabulation button to receive results. Overall, mail counties will be reporting quicker than those counties waiting on poll sites.

Sam Reed’sNews Release November 03, 2006

Perhaps he doesn’t include King County in that assumption, as he does say the word, “Overall”.

Vote-By Mail Lobbyist Targets Colorado

In this story we see the first appearance of the Vote By Mail Project popping up in Colorado:

http://cbs4denver.com/politics/local_story_094111211.html

(AP) DENVER Unable to vote in November’s election because of long lines at the polls, 62-year-old cancer survivor Penny Baldwin is ready to switch to voting by mail for good.

“I’m at an age where I’m not sure where I’m going to be,” Baldwin said Tuesday, referring to her health.

Colorado voters would be able to sign up to vote by mail permanently under a bill set to be considered by state lawmakers Wednesday, a measure introduced partly in response to the problems in Denver and other counties in recent elections. Currently voters are free to request an absentee ballot without providing a reason but they have to make that request before each election.

Permanent mail ballots are available in California and Washington and Oregon now conducts all of its elections by mail, said Kristen Thomson, a lobbyist pushing for the change. The measure is sponsored by former Secretary of State candidate Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, and is backed by the Oregon-based Vote By Mail Project, which includes election officials from Washington and Oregon.

Who is Kristen Thomson? Suddenly Vote-By Mail, this supposedly “Grassroots organization” from Oregon now has lobbyists in other states?