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

Post Office Loses Ballots in Florida Election Contest

Something I’ve warned about in this blog continuously over the past two years, is the US Post Office’s ability to lose mail. Well in Florida it actually made the news when absentee ballots were lost in the race for State House District 55:

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=76237

Molinaro says the race is in jeopardy because of a mix-up at the post office. 1117 absentee ballots – gone.

“They show a record of them coming into that clearing house, but not going out, and nothing going through Tampa or going back to St. Pete,” she explained. 

Of course anyone with a functioning brain could have predicted such an occurence. Just ask yourself how much of your neighbor’s mail have you received in the past few years. But the forces behind Vote-By Mail will not give up just because ballots are sometimes lost, in fact, it’s probably statistically safe to say ballots are lost in virtually every Vote-By Mail election.

Absentee voting on the rise, who’s pushing this agenda?

Ohio’s News Herald has a relatively balanced article on the rise of absentee voting, but doesn’t dig much below the surface:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19289537&BRD=1698&PAG=461&dept_id=21849&rfi=6 

To keep up with the demand, the board hired 30 part-time temporary employees at $10 an hour.
“If demand for absentee ballots continues at this rate, more people than ever could vote by mail than in any other election in the county’s history,” West said. “The last time vote-by-mail numbers were this high was in the November 2006 election, when the governor’s race was on the ballot and over 105,000 voters requested vote-by-mail ballots.”
In Geauga County, there were 1,700 absentee voters in the last presidential election. For the March 4 election, 1,800 voters already have requested absentee ballots.
“We may double the amount from the last presidential election,” Director Arch Kimbrew said.

The article then quotes John Fortier, about some of the problems with the rising trend towards more absentee voting. But what I really want to know is who’s pushing this agenda? Why are they pushing this agenda? And how are they funding lobbyists around the country to push this agenda?

California, Millions of Uncounted Vote-By Mail Ballots Left

California’s Primary Presidential vote is still far from over, about 1.5 million votes from over, that is….

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/02/an_estimated_15.html

But there still are well over a million votes, probably about 1.5 million votes that remain to be counted. While these will not change the winner of the statewide vote, these ballots could very well affect the numbers of delegates awarded to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, especially in the local delegates elected in Congressional Districts.

Estimates from the Secretary of State’s office are that 9.1 million Californians voted, but the totals so far that we can see are 7.7 million.

The “Unprocessed Ballot Page” of the California Secretary of State lists an estimated additional 881,127 votes that were not counted in the figures released the day after the election. But even this figure does not include any estimates from Los Angeles County, the largest in the state and home to about one quarter of the voters in California. If past trends hold, Los Angeles alone will see at least 200,000 additional votes tallied, if not substantially more. Other large counties that haven’t even gotten around to estimating the uncounted ballots they are processing include Alameda County—the heaviest Democratic voting county in the state, Napa County, which had a huge turnout, Santa Barbara, and Solana County. There are other counties extant, as they say, that will also push up the vote total.

The votes to be counted are mostly vote-by-mail ballots (VBM) turned in to the polling places and counties on election day or in the crush of mail the day before. Earlier VBM ballots have been counted and were lined up by all or most county registrar of voters’ offices for processing before the polls closed.

Napa County, for instance, has not turned in an estimate yet—that has made it to the Secretary of State’s page–but according to press accounts there are an estimated 5,000 to 12,000 VBM ballots to be counted, according to a statement he made to the Napa Valley Register. Considering the size of Napa County, those uncounted ballots amount to about 25% of all votes cast.

More discussions on the California Vote-By Mail phenomenon:

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/11/vote_by_mail_ha.html

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/10/absentee_voting_1.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/05/california.ballots/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/story/0,,2252867,00.html

Confusion Over Deadline Disqualifies Voters

Just another error in the Vote-By Mail system, or “glitch” as it is often referred to by election officials:

http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2008/02/09/front/599194.txt

The Saturday before the election, March 1, is the last day county offices can mail out absentee ballots. Many people assume mail-in ballots need only to be postmarked before the day of the election. That’s not correct.

“It has to be in the office by the close of the polls by March 4. Being postmarked doesn’t mean anything,” Locke said. “And you know how the mail is — if it’s getting down to the last few days, I’d bring it in and drop it off myself to make sure it’s in.”

Vote-By Mail disenfranchises 1/3rd of Kitsap County Primary Voters

This just in… and in my new home county no-less:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_invalid_ballots.html 

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. — The Kitsap County auditor says about a third of the 15,000 mail-in ballots it has received for the Feb. 19 primary so far are invalid and will not be counted.

Auditor Karen Flynn says voters failed to check the box selecting the Democratic or Republican Party.

Primary voters must not only choose one presidential candidate on the ballot, they must also check an oath on the envelope promising they will not take part in the other party’s nominating process.

With precinct based optical scan systems, there is the possibility for second-chance voting. Which means, in short, that if the ballot is filled out wrong, for instance no party preference is chosen, then the machine kicks the ballot back to the voter for error correction. The poll workers would probably be in charge of having voters fill out the oath before providing a ballot as well. Oh well, it’s just 1/3rd of the voters. That’s 66% that got it right, and a D is still a passing grade, right?

For more information, read this, and this.

Island County Greens Take On Vote By Mail Ballot Secrecy

The Green Party up in Island County, has recently filed suit over the use of Votehere’s Ballot tracking software. Votehere is a slick company, run by a bunch of slick corporate types, with interesting ties to the CIA. Votehere has a fancy cryptography solution that they claim will protect the secrecy of the vote, and the integrity of the system. It’s oddly similar to the response most voting companies, like Diebold, give when confronted, “Just trust us.”

I will dig up some more information and links as I have time.