Why Arizona's Election Integrity Groups Opposed Prop 205

Written by: fIrEfOx! on Jan 29, 2007 4:48 PM EST

Linked to groups: AuditAZ

from ACER

You already have the right to vote by mail

And 15 other reasons to vote

NO on Prop 205

1.   No exit polls on election day to verify the accuracy of the vote.

2.   Greater chance of fraud. Since ballots go to every household around the same time, if not the same day, targeting neighborhods with an all-vote-by-mail system becomes much easier than when vote-by-mail is done by request and in conjunction with poll voting. There will also be many unvoted ballots floating around at apartment complexes, retirement homes, schools, multi-unit mailboxes, etc.

3.   Takes away voting at the polls. Since everyone will be mailed a ballot, only provisional ballots will be allowed for in-person early voting and voting at the polls.

4.   Precincts are audited at 2% while early ballots are audited at 1% so Prop 205 would cut in half the hand audit election integrity activists fought so hard to get.

5.   "The most important concerns raised by these procedures focus on increased opportunities for corruption. Indeed, the most prominent recent election fraud court cases involved absentee ballots— Dodge County, Georgia in 1996 and Miami in 1997. Dodge County involved two competing candidates for the Democratic nomination for the county commission bidding against each other for absentee ballots inside the county courthouse. In Miami, fraud so pervaded the absentee ballots that an appellate court eventually threw out all absentee ballots and declared a winner based solely on the machine vote."†
"Concerns over coercion are especially acute in settings where voters may be reliant on care givers, as in nursing homes."†

6.   Turnout results are mixed - "There is no evidence that liberalizing absentee voting laws or enacting early or vote-by-mail schemes has increased voter turnout dramatically"†, "sixteen states and the District of Columbia had turnout increases in 2000 that exceeded Oregon’s"†, "[i]n every presidential election year since Texas began early voting in 1988, the voting turnout increase in Texas has been less than turnout increases nationwide"†, "the increase is noticeable only in low profile contests."‡

7.   Matching of signatures is slow process, not done by experts, a potential problem for elderly voters and those whose signature changes over time.

8.   If there is a problem and a voter does not get their ballot by mail, it will be hard for them to vote a regular ballot.

9.   Initiative does not improve Arizona’s Vote by Mail system, it just gets rid of polling places. Precinct cast ballots are the only ballots checked for over-votes and allows the voter to correct mistakes.

10. DRE Touch-screen voting machines will still be used, so this initiative does not guarantee a paper ballot for every voter.

11. Voters who do not have residential addresses or updated ones will likely be disenfranchised--people in nursing homes, people who move frequently, people who use post office boxes and people without addresses for whatever reason.

12. Slowness - In Washington State in 2000, over half of all ballots were cast absentee count in Washington meant that recounts in two very close races, U.S. Senate and Secretary of State, were not ordered until three weeks after Election Day. Recounts in less visible local races were similarly delayed.

13. Inaccuracy - in the 2004 Republican primary in legislative district 20, a race initially won by 4 votes, had a machine recount that found 505 errors - 465 (92.3%) of which were the vote by mail ballots.

14. Premature decisions - Just weeks before the election, after some early ballots have already been sent out, the information came out about Mark Foley. And, in a high profile US Senate race in Minnesota, Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash less than 2 weeks before the election - after many voters had already cast their mail-in ballot.

15. Last, but not least, is the feeling of civic participation people feel going to the polls, and the demonstration to other countries of how democratic governments operate with the consent of the governed.

REFERENCES

† Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. 2001. Voting: What is, What Could Be. California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Website

‡ Report for the Commission on Federal Election Reform. 2005. Co-Chairs: President Jimmy Carter and Honorable James A. Baker, III. Ballot Integrity and Voting by Mail: The Oregon Experience. Dr. Paul Gronke, Director, EVIC at Reed College.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Report on Florida Voter Fraud Issues

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Location: AZ