On Jan. 30, Oregon became the first state to conduct a statewide vote-by-mail election for a federal office when Representative Ron Wyden (D) was elected to replace Senator Bob Packwood (R), who resigned in October.
That night, Marion County Clerk Al Davidson was home by 11 p.m., early for an election night, he said. “My wife and kids appreciated it.” They can thank a new concept called vote-by-mail.
Actually, Oregon’s been at it for more than a dozen years, but never on such a large scale. On March 12, the state will conduct the first all vote-by-mail presidential primary.
It’s not a system that’s widely used elsewhere, although the idea is picking up some steam. In addition to Oregon, the vote-by-mail method has been tried, to a smaller degree, in parts of Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Utah and Washington.
Most of the mail-in elections conducted in these states involve only ballot issues or non-partisan contests, although Alaska, Minnesota, Utah and Washington are among those states that have expanded vote-by-mail to include partisan elections, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). State election laws dictate how counties conduct elections and all-mail ballot elections require specific authorizing legislation from the state.
The first vote-by-mail election, according to the FEC, took place in Monterey, Calif. in 1977, in an election concerning flood control. County officials there reported a savings of $10,000 and doubled voter participation.
Oregon’s statewide vote-by-mail election this year has grabbed headlines for the same reasons. “We’ve had people calling from all over the country — counties, legislators, governors,” Davidson said.
The state is in the spotlight because of the results the January experiment achieved: Oregon is touting a high voter turnout — about 65 percent, although whether that is considered a high turnout for Oregon is disputed by some, including Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, in Washington, D.C.
“It appears [the Oregon Senate election] didn’t do as well as publicized,” he said. “The turnout was lower than average for a midterm election [in Oregon]. It didn’t meet the expectations of enhancing turnout.” Although the special election was not a typical midterm election, Gans said it was “comparable.”
Davidson said Gans is equating “apples and oranges … it’s the wrong comparison.” He said the average for a comparable single-issue election would be about a 42 percent turnout.
Another attention-grabber that is not disputed: Oregon’s savings of between $2 million to $3 million for the combined January election and a December primary, also conducted by mail.
Davidson explained that in a traditional election, Marion County pays about 700 poll workers $100 a day for time spent training and for a 13- to 14-hour day the day of the election. With vote-by-mail, the number of people needed is fewer than 50. Statewide, Oregon’s 36 counties employ about 2,200 to 2,300 poll workers during traditional polling place elections.
But Gans said just because “they’re going after more savings doesn’t make it right.” Davidson said Gans and other “think tankers” may criticize vote-by-mail, but they’re “not involved in it.”
A vote-by-mail pilot project in Stanislaus County, Calif., conducted between 1993–1995 by Clerk Recorder Karen Matthews, was also a big success in terms of voter turnout and savings.
Voter turnout, normally seven percent below the state average, was eight percent above the state average in a state election held in 1993, Matthews said. That election also saved the county half of its usual expenditure of $400,000.
Matthews had hoped to see vote-by-mail in every county in California after the pilot project. “All of the counties would like it,” she said. “But it got as far as the governor’s office.”
Vote-by-mail is a highly charged issue in political circles, she said. 3"Our county clerks’ association has met with both political parties. They’re [politicians] concerned they can’t run campaigns in such a short time.” Although hopes of expanding vote-by-mail met with resistance in the past, she said the clerks’ association will try again to get legislation enacted.
In Oregon, a measure passed last year by both majority Republican houses was vetoed by the governor, a Democrat. The legislation would have extended vote-by-mail to all elections, not just local, primary and special elections. The governor said the state needed more time to study the issue, but some say politics may have played a role.
Pierce County, Wash. held its first vote-by-mail primary election last year and saw a 37 percent voter turnout, an improvement over the 14 percent for a previous off-year primary in 1993, according to Auditor Cathy Pearsall-Stipek. Pierce County was one of 13 counties in Washington to try vote-by-mail in its September primaries last year.
In New Mexico, counties have the option of using vote-by-mail for bond elections. San Juan County Clerk Carol Bandy said the county came out about even on the cost, but she saw voter participation soar when the mailing method was used — from about 39 percent vs. 12 percent for traditional polling place elections on bond issues.
“We really enjoyed the mail-in here, and participation was so much greater,” she said. As in Oregon and California, a measure to allow wider use of vote-by-mail in New Mexico was defeated several years ago by the state’s then-governor. New Mexico even tried a vote-by-telephone experiment several years ago, but the idea withered when the secretary of state didn’t get the political support she needed.
One innovation that has caught on is the use of computers, which help accelerate the voting process by counting ballots and verifying signatures of voters. “Most of our larger counties have gone to that,” Davidson said. “We use a wand,” he noted, that “swipes” the signature from the outside envelope of the ballot (similar to the system used at most grocery stores). The signature is compared to the signature on the voter’s registration card, stored in the computer. Davidson said the county’s computer system was purchased several years ago and paid for itself in less than a year.
Another “partner” in the vote-by-mail equation is the U.S. Postal Service. The postal service has account representatives in each state capital, ready to “work up individual proposals,” said Les Ford, U.S. Postal Service sales specialist, in Washington, D.C. “It costs you nothing to use us.”
The postal service’s role may include suggesting mailing options, assisting with address databases, assisting in designing mail pieces, arranging for special handling of election materials, and coordinating the collection and delivery of election materials.
After the Oregon election, the postal service took out ads in newspapers, touting its role in the election.
Ford doesn’t deny that the postal service is interested in making a little money from vote-by-mail. “Sure, there is revenue generated from it,” he said. “We’re just saying, if you do decide to do it, bring us into the loop. We want to make it as easy as possible.”
For those who don’t trust the mail or who don’t wish to purchase a stamp, Oregon has made drop boxes available. Or voters always have the option of dropping their mail ballot off at the county clerk’s office. In New Mexico, the counties foot the bill for postage.
In North Dakota, U.S. Postal Service Account Representative Cleo Swanson visited each of the 53 counties to help establish computer files that standardize each county’s mailing list.
On Feb. 27, North Dakota held its first vote-by-mail presidential primary, which also included traditional voting at polls, although the number of open polls around the state was reduced from 739 to 53, one per county.
The vote-by-mail idea in North Dakota came about as a way to save money after the state legislature voted to move its primary from June to February.
Counties mailed out 260,000 applications for mail-in ballots to those who had voted in the 1994 election. Applications were also available in local newspapers, at all post offices and at county auditors’ offices.
Some voters had already cast their vote when Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas) dropped out of the race on Feb. 14.
“That was always in the back of our minds [that a candidate might drop out after voting had begun],” said Cory Fong, the state elections administrator. “It’s just one of those things. I didn’t think it would happen.”
It’s one of those things that fuels critics’ arguments against the concept, who say the practice will ruin a hallowed piece of Americana.
“The mail ballot turns that sacred experience into the equivalent of filling out a Publishers Clearinghouse ballot,” raged Norman Ornstein in a recent column in The Washington Post. Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, says “the vote itself will be cheapened and diluted.”
Gans, the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, agrees. Voting at the polls, a “ritual of gathering with our neighbors,” is “one of the few remaining acts in our society” that states should not change, he maintains.
“From my point of view, it’s [vote-by-mail] a stupid idea,” says Gans.
Davidson, the Marion County clerk, disagrees. “They can say this destroys our sense of community, but the key point is it’s our citizens choosing to do this.” A survey of 1,225 Oregonians, conducted by the University of Oregon after the January election, shows that 76.5 percent favor vote-by-mail over polling place elections.
Gans also claims that vote-by-mail does away with the secret ballot. “I wouldn’t put it past an NRA [National Rifle Association] leader in a community to gather people together” to vote. “That peer pressure can be rejected in the secrecy of a ballot box,” he said. But respondents to an FEC study published last year say vote-by-mail is “at least as fraud-free as polling-place and absentee” voting.
Even Oregon has a few detractors. “From a cost standpoint, it saves [counties] money,” said Bob Cantine, executive director of the Association of Oregon Counties. “But whether they think it’s the best approach ... it depends on which commissioner you talk to.”
Cantine said some commissioners have voiced their opinions that going to a polling place is “an important ritual that is a part of the democratic process.” Others also say it makes it harder to campaign. “Normally, [a campaign] builds to a crescendo,” said Cantine. But with vote-by-mail, when constituents mail their ballot in sometimes weeks before election day, candidates “don’t know if they’re getting to the right people.”
Gans noted that often, information about a candidate is made public only days before an election. Voters who mail in their ballots weeks ahead of time would not have the opportunity to change their vote.
But Davidson contends “we have to decide whether campaigns are going to be conducted for the people or the candidates.”
Gans does not completely oppose vote-by-mail. He said he is not against using it for “non-contentious, off-cycle elections.”
In Colorado, some counties are using vote-by-mail for non-partisan contests, but not Denver County. “Where is the control? How do you determine whether there is fraud?” said Arlys Ward, executive director of the county election commission. She said she’s simply airing the fears of those who oppose the idea, “mostly on philosophical” grounds. She said those who are against it don’t like the idea of “spoon-feeding” voters or leaving a person’s vote “up to the post office.”
Ward said she is especially wary of the idea after a local television station showed their audience how susceptible the state’s election system was to fraud. A reporter registered a dog, a cat and the president of the United States as voters. Ward conceded that the state’s voter registration system could probably use some fine-tuning before the county jumps into vote-by-mail.
Although Oregon has experimented with vote-by-mail for about 14 years, the method is still in something of a trial phase. Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling has appointed a vote-by-mail citizen commission — made up of both “vote-by-mail skeptics and supporters” — to evaluate the process. The commission will issue a report this summer.
“If we were designing a [election] system from scratch today, we wouldn’t create [polling place voting],” Davidson said. “It wasn’t that many years ago when the clerk would stand on the courthouse steps and read off the names and people would raise their hands and be counted off.”
“If people say there is a lost sense of community, I don’t think you can blame that on the election process,” he said.
(For more information about all-mail ballot elections, contact the Federal Election Commission for a free booklet, “Innovations in Election Administration” (Publication #11), by calling 800/424-9530.)
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