89 Articles About Why Voting By Mail is a Very Bad Idea

Are you wondering why voting by mail or absentee is a bad idea? Are you looking for information about the problems encountered by all absentee voting systems? Well then, welcome to The No Vote By Mail Project’s Website. There’s hundreds of articles now in the archives, so I thought I’d put together a giant list of the best articles I’ve written so far about voting by mail and the problems I’ve found. It might take a few days to put together, but here’s what I have so far:

1.  What’s Wrong With Voting by Mail or Absentee Ballot
2. The Death of the Polling Place
3. Absentee Ballot Fraud Hits Texas, Grannyfarming a longterm problem
4. Milwaukee Police Find Numerous Cases of Absentee Vote Fraud
5. Vladimir Putin Prefers Voting By Mail
6. Don’t Forget to Sign Your Ballot
7. Absentee voting on the rise, who’s pushing this agenda?
8. Vote-By Mail disenfranchises 1/3rd of Kitsap County Primary Voters
9. New Jersey Voters Vote Again?
10. MIT Study says “Abolish on-demand absentee voting”
11. Vote-By Mail and Electronic Poll Books
12. More Vote By Mail Problems in California
13. Oklahoma State Auditor and wife charged with Mail Fraud
14. California’s televised primary debates miss many voters
15. California Primary Slowed By Vote-By Mail, Absentee Ballot Count
16. Another Case of Vote-By Mail Fraud
17. Democrats say,”An easier way to vote fraudulently is by mail”
18. How VBM is Screwing Up California’s Primary
19. Postmasters Lobby for Vote-By Mail
20. Absentee Ballot Fraud Alleged in Putin’s Election
21. Just where or where has my mail ballot gone?
22. Colorado Voter Group Opposes Vote-By Mail Switch
23. 4204 Passing, King County Gets the Blame
24. Absentees and Optical Scans, a Combination that Doesn’t Work
25. Day 6 of vote counting in King County
26. Poll Votes much faster to count then Absentee Ballots
27. Did you already vote by mail? Well it’s too late to change your mind now…
28. More Absentee Ballot Fraud
29. Expanding and Improving Opportunities to Commit Vote By Mail Fraud
30. Vote by Mail Fraud, You Don’t Say
31. Absentee Ballot Problems in Akron, Ohio
32. More research shows vote by mail systems do NOT increase turnout
33. King County Executive, Ron Sims, Contracts to Buy Ballot Tracking Vaporware
34. Hanky Panky In Union Vote-By Mail Scheme
35. The Election is in the Mail… Day 14
36. Some Democrats Reject Forced Vote-By Mail
37. Vote by mail increases turnout?
38. My mail from June 13, 2006
39. Vote Buying (You don’t say)
40. Voter turnout – higher or lower or the same?
41. VBM turns out about 1/3rd of Washington Voter’s
42. King County Adds 27,114 Votes in 3rd Day of Counting
43. 4th Day of Vote Counting brought to you by Vote-by Mail
44. 1 Week Later… Votes still coming in to King County Elections
45. 798 More Ballots Arrive One Week After the Election…
46. US Postal Service Unions Pushing Vote-By Mail
47. King County wraps up seventh day of vote counting
48. Diebold Dazzles (King County) Democrats
49. Colorado Editorial: Ripe for Fraud
50. Montana’s Secret Ballot Increasingly Endangered Species
51. Postmaster General Adresses National Association of Secretaries of State
52. Let’s all vote by mail, just like…Texas
53. Hand Counted Paper Ballots for 2008?
54. Barack Obama Targets Vote Banking through Vote By Mail in California
55. Pierce County Sacrifices Polling Places for Forced Vote By Mail Absentee Voting
56. Granny Farming of Absentee Ballots in NJ
57. More on Kentucky Absentee Ballot Fraud
58. Take the Last Train to Clarksville, and Don’t forget to Vote
59. More Absentee Votes Might Not Count Due to County Errors
60. King County’s Wreckless Plan to Switch To Vote-By Mail
61. Harvard’s Ben Adida on Vote By Mail and the Secret Ballot
62. Saving Money At The Price Of Democracy
63. Vote-By Mail Lobbyist Targets Colorado
64. King County, WA, 13 Days of Vote Counting, Seattle Special Election, 2007
65. Why Mail Ballots Are a Bad Idea
66. New Report on Vote By Mail, VBM Does Not Really Increase Turnout
67. George Galloway Blasts UK’s Postal Voting System
68. Oregon and Other States Mail Service Outsourced?
69. Vote Buying, Bath County, KY
70. New Group to Push VBM Nationally
71. Taiwanese Mull Absentee Voting, and China’s Potential Influence On Voters
72. The “Myth” of Vote Fraud
73. The Death of the Polling Place, Island County, WA
74. “Granny Farming” Allegations in Michigan, Virginia, and California moves towards VBM
75. Vote By Mail a Growing National Attack on Democracy
76. More Postal Vote Fraud in the UK
77. Vote Buying in Kentucky
78. When a Secret Ballot Isn’t Really A Secret Ballot
79. Prosecuting Honest Voters Does Not Restore My Confidence In Forced Mail Voting
80. Vote By Mail, Not Cheaper, No Suprise
81. Absentee Ballot Fraud Allegations and other News, 1/24/2007
82. California Declares Mail Ballot Only Precincts 
83. NJ Absentee Ballot Stuffing
84. Oregon We Have a Problem
85. The Ongoing Drama of Absentee Voting Problems
86. Mayor Uses Absentee Ballots to Rig Election, Dateline Nov. 30th, 2006
87. One Month After the Election… Votes Still Being Counted
88. Vote By Mail-A Great Example of Voting Badly
89. More Electoral Fraud By Mail – Dec. 12, 2006

Advertisement

Two Articles You Might Find Interesting Concerning Absentee Voting

First up, a man has admitted to using his deceased mother’s absentee ballot to vote. He’s facing 5 years of jail time….
http://www.wpsdtv.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=a95b477b-ffd6-4db6-a4f8-9c3ead68c7a4

And a college student asks, “Should We Dump the Absentee Ballot?” And specifically, he asked yours truly…
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3121.cfm

Then there’s this great essay over at Blackboxvoting.org, not specifically about Absentee Voting, but it’s about the best writing on voting integrity I’ve come across in a long while:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/73637.html

Ohio Secretary of State Wants to Make Voting Worse with VBM

Repeating the Vote-By Mail mantra, Ohio’s Secretary of State Brunner, “thinks some counties would find voting by mail more convenient and less expensive than opening polls on Election Day, and she wants the idea debated.”

Notice that she hasn’t argued that VBM is more secure, trustworthy, or acccurate. But she is worried about security:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/04/15/votebymail.ART_ART_04-15-08_A1_RE9UB8A.html?sid=101

“She also wants to keep county elections officials from taking voting machines home with them on the eve of an election. Some officials do that so they can take them directly to the polls the next morning, but that raises security concerns, she said.”

Oh gee, that’s swell. She’s against election officials TAKING THE MACHINES HOME WITH THEM! Like that’s somehow a radical stance on reform?

Secretary Brunner took out the Republican SOS so famous for Ohio, 2004. Kenneth Blackwell. It would be nice if she’d act like she understood the dangers of voting by mail as well.

The underlying problem with both is the private control of vital elements of the voting system. Physical control of the voting machines, the software, or vote-by mail, all separate the poll worker from the system of vote counting. Voting machines remove the counting control, vote-by mail puts the physical ballot in the hand of the post office instead of the poll worker. Both are big mistakes. The poll voting system puts all the control in the hands of the people, and so far all the other systems take that away. Everything else is a form of privatization.

Absentee Voting News for April 4th, 2008

Party switchers getting wrong absentee ballots
Allentown Morning Call – 15 hours ago
Marilyn Larson, 65, of Newtown said she’s glad her husband checked his ballot as soon at it arrived in the mail. The couple switched to the Democratic Party last month to vote in the primary. When her husband, Jerry, 66, opened his ballot, …
Snafu sends wrong absentee ballots phillyBurbs.com
all 5 news articles »

Vote by Mail Legislation Eliminates Burdens on the Right to Vote
ACLU (press release) – Apr 2, 2008
Sponsored by Representative Susan Davis (D-CA), HR 281 would ensure that all Americans have an equal opportunity to vote by mail in federal elections for any reason. Currently, 29 states allow universal absentee voting, which permits any voter to …

 

House Panel Passes Rep. Susan Davis’s No-Excuse Absentee Ballot …
VoteTrustUSA – Apr 2, 2008
The Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act (HR 281) was reported to the full House on a voice vote. “This straightforward bill would simply give any eligible voter the option of voting by absentee ballot,” said Davis, a member of the committee.

 

No surge of new voters here
Shelbyville News – 10 hours ago
And just because someone has voted for a particular party in one election, that does not mean they have to continue to vote for that party, Williams said. Williams said he has received more absentee ballots in the mail this political season from …