Poll Votes much faster to count then Absentee Ballots

Dellusional? That’s our Secretary of State Sam Reed.

Switching to vote-by mail, or forced absentee ballots, was suppose to make the vote counting faster:

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

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’s News Release November 03, 2006

But, in fact, it’s making the process much slower:

https://novbm.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/king-countywa-13-days-of-vote-counting-seattle-special-election-2007/

Now it is currently two days after the November 6th, 2007 election here in Washington. And King County is currently reporting an additional 71, 627 votes just showed up today.  The King County Elections website also reports that 99.02% of poll site votes have already been counted. Possible that extra 0.98% of votes are provisional ballots cast by absentee voters who went to the polls to vote, as they either never received their ballot in the first place, or it got lost in the junk mail. Either way, reality continues to underscore the lies on which vote-by mail is being forced down the throats of Washington State voters, and King County.

Sam Reed also predicted a 51% turnout this time. Apparently voters didn’t get the memo. King County is currently just cresting 25% turnout, and a whole lot of counties are barely higher than that. In fact, it looks like only 6 counties in all of Washington crested the 50% mark.  Of course, all mail voting will fix this problem, just like it did in Oregon, right? Not according to the results coming out of Oregon, where statewide turnout is looking to be about 28%.

Wow! Reality strikes another blow against the lies that this system is predicated on. Of course that won’t stop other states, like Iowa, from pointing to Washington and Oregon as examples of how vote-by mail increases turnout:

CEDAR RAPIDS — Iowa Gov. Chet Culver wants to look into having Iowans cast their ballots by mail, and he’s asking for input from residents and elected officials.

The GazetteOnline.com

Of course reality will be ignored, because well, vote-by mail also (according to VBM proponents) decreases the potential for fraud. At least the Spokesman Review caught that lie:

At the polls, the only time ballots are not under the direct supervision of election workers is when a voter takes his ballot to vote in a private voting booth. Election officials have no control over mail ballots for weeks; many are never returned.

This lack of control allows ample opportunity for ballots to be stolen, altered or destroyed, both before ballots are delivered and after. Even if a voter receives his ballot intact, the secrecy of the voting booth has been destroyed. Domineering family members, friends, union officials, employers, nursing home workers or religious leaders can ensure the voter cast a ballot “correctly.”

These are not just theoretical dangers. In Virginia, a mayor and 13 residents of a small town have been charged with stealing ballots from mailboxes and casting them fraudulently.

In Hartford, Conn., eight local politicians were arrested for absentee ballot fraud, including a state representative who last year pleaded guilty to “encouraging” voters in a housing complex to vote for him.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=159067

So what have we learned so far. Reality seems to indicate that Vote-by mail is:

1. NOT Faster than poll voting
2. MORE not LESS prone to fraud than poll voting
3. Vote-by Mail is having LESS than stellar results in increasing turnout.

In fact, looking back to 2005, the last off-year election, statewide turnout was 54.82%, and that was with less vote-by mail counties. And King County was at 53.77%, as compared to the current um 25% turnout. But maybe that’s just a fluke, let’s go back and look at 2003. Well I can’t seem to find the turnout from 2003, but at the time they predicted:

King County Elections expects an overall countywide turnout of 47.42% which is average for an odd year General Election, with an approximate 70% turnout among voters who vote by absentee ballot. Currently, 46% of King County voters have chosen to permanently vote by mail.

So apparently as more and more people are forced to vote-by mail King County was expecting those mail voters to return up to 70% of those mail-in ballots. But now turnout is at around 25%. Of course as thousand upon thousands of ballots are returned over the next 3 weeks that number will increase, but I predict it will maybe reach the 48% average, and come nowhere near the 70% they were predicting back in 2003.

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