Voter Turnout; Just Bragging (house seat, voters, campaign, thought)
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November 2010 election, regardless of who won, seems to have been high voter turnout. I seem to remember back in 1998 when I was living in Western PA, the voter turnout was something like 35%.
But in Oregon last week, we hit a voter turnout of 69.8%. I think that is pretty High.
Welcome to ORESTAR ! (http://egov.sos.state.or.us/division/elections/results/2010G/1577763306.html - broken link)
{county by county voter turnout)
Oregon uses only mail-in-ballots so it technically is called Voter Ballot Returns.
Just asking...
Any state that can top that?
Phil
PS: Oregon's biggest city, Portland is located in Multnomah County.
November 2010 election, regardless of who won, seems to have been high voter turnout. I seem to remember back in 1998 when I was living in Western PA, the voter turnout was something like 35%.
But in Oregon last week, we hit a voter turnout of 69.8%. I think that is pretty High.
Welcome to ORESTAR ! (http://egov.sos.state.or.us/division/elections/results/2010G/1577763306.html - broken link)
{county by county voter turnout)
Oregon uses only mail-in-ballots so it technically is called Voter Ballot Returns.
Just asking...
Any state that can top that?
Phil
PS: Oregon's biggest city, Portland is located in Multnomah County.
Mail in ballots and absentee ballots, are riddled heavily with voter fraud.
Documented over and over
Mail in ballots and absentee ballots, are riddled heavily with voter fraud.
Documented over and over
Haven't heard a single word of voter registration fraud in Portland or State of Oregon actually being proved, or even a valid complaint written up in daily newspapers.
Cannot say for other states, other elections. Seems to work in Oregon, may not work in other states.
But still waiting to hear another state who claims high voter turnout to match or beat Oregon's voting turnout.
phil, according to the Daily Beast rankings, Minnesota leads the U.S. in voter turnout. Oregon comes in sixth. I'm not sure if this study includes 2010 mid term. In the past Oregon has had up to 85% plus participation in some of our elections. Of note, Newsweek and The Daily Beast have just merged.
Regarding the the reliability of vote by mail, Oregon studied how to implement an effective and fraud free voting system for ten years before our system was instituted. Signature verification before a ballot is counted safeguards against fraud. Every ballot is read by an optical scan machine and provides an automatic paper trail. The beauty of vote by mail is that citizens who are homebound and those that don't have cars or maybe work two jobs can now vote. washingtonpost.com: Vote-by-Mail: The Real Winner Is Democracy Election Day 2010: Voter Turnout by States, Minnesota Leads - The Daily Beast
Thanks for the links. I think, but cannot prove that the Daily Beast article was written before the full voter count ended. It took about 5 days before the Multnomah count completed and I think that bumped Oregon's voter turnout up.
And yes I had heard about the signature scanning computer software Oregon uses. I wasn't living in Oregon when that system was put in place, but I am lead to understand that the scanner system is actually more "hacker-immune" than many of the electronic substitutes for the old mechanical voter booths with all the levers.
All I can say, having lived in several other states is I like the Oregon system way, WAY better. Not to mention the State voter's guide, a pile of newspapers, a cup of coffee, and all the time I want (no waiting line grumbling about hurry up) to make a decision all while sitting in my big easy chair. I got my ballot in the mail a full week before Election Day. I like it.
Haven't heard a single word of voter registration fraud in Portland or State of Oregon actually being proved, or even a valid complaint written up in daily newspapers.
Cannot say for other states, other elections. Seems to work in Oregon, may not work in other states.
But still waiting to hear another state who claims high voter turnout to match or beat Oregon's voting turnout.
Truth is, vote by mail is a formula for election fraud. The flaw is obvious: From beginning to end, no real human ever has to see the voter’s face. No real person determines that you are who you say you are, or that the person you say you are even exists.
Unscrupulous people can easily mark someone else’s ballot and not get caught. Have any fictitious names you want to vote under? It’s easy. Who’s going to know?Some voter's ballots are mailed to a P.O. Box. The person picking up his mail throws the ballot in the trash if he or she doesn't want to vote on a particular issue. Anyone can retrieve those ballots out of the trash.
In Oregon, anyone who wants to, can have three or four additional ballots mailed to their home. Why vote just once when you can vote early and often? And what about your dog? Shouldn’t he have a say regarding who will represent him in the next legislature? You registered him with the county, why not with the elections division?
Under the old system it was hard to sneak an extra ballot past those ever-attentive little old ladies down at the voting precinct. Unless you were a master of disguises, more likely than not, those gals would recognize you from your earlier trip that same day.
Not so with vote-by-mail. No one has to see your mug in person. Not ever. If you’re a cheat, here’s all you have to do to vote three or four times in the next election: Next time you stop by the local post office or the Department of Motor Vehicles, pick up a handful of voter registration cards. They’re free and there’s no limit on how many you can take. Using your own address, fill in the names of relatives in other states, or easier yet, just make up any names you like. Names that have a minority ring to them are best. With the government’s commitment to political correctness, minority names are less likely to be challenged.
You don’t need to show identification of any kind. You don’t have to demonstrate residency. After all, that would discriminate against the homeless. You don’t have to demonstrate citizenship, either. That would be an attack on minorities and immigrants. All you need is a name, address or a P.O. Box to which the elections division can mail all those official ballots.
When I said you could vote three or four extra times, that was because the folks at the elections division might get suspicious, if you have ten or twenty ballots sent to your little, two bedroom house. If, however, you are the manager of a large apartment complex, the sky’s the limit. You might be able to decide a local election single-handedly. Heck, 500 votes or so in Florida decided the presidency of the United States. Think big!
Of course, I’m not recommending that you actually do this. That would be dishonest, and certainly, there are penalties if you get caught. The chances of getting caught, however, are minimal.
In fact, the only real safeguard in the system is that each ballot has to be signed. All that means, though, is if you’re going to sign lots of different ballots personally, you need to sign each one differently and keep a sample of each signature so you can sign the same in future elections. You can even trace the signatures, so they look identical. (Note: To open a bank account you need two sets of I.D.'s to prove your identity. To cash a check, some banks require thumb prints. Not so with voting.)
There was a case in Oregon recently where a woman traced a dozen or so signatures on a petition. Each signature was examined by a clerk at the elections division and compared to the original signature on the person’s voter’s voter registration card. Every signature was certified as genuine. They weren’t. They were all fraudulent. The woman had traced them from another document, and they only looked genuine. The elections division missed every one of them.
Not too long ago, some renters moved out of a house I own and left the state. Sure enough, a few weeks before the next election, a half dozen official ballots showed up in the mailbox. I could have traced my ex-renters signatures off the rental agreement and onto their ballots and mailed them to the elections division marked any way I chose. Except for God and me, who would have known?
It would have been easy, and the chances that I would have been caught, close to zero. Why? Because there’s simply no way the local elections office can carefully check the signatures on hundreds of thousands of ballots in a short period of time. If the signatures were traced, they probably wouldn’t catch the forgeries anyway, even if they looked carefully at each one.
That’s the problem. Vote by mail is a system designed for honest people. It is predicated on the notion that people are basically good and won’t cheat. Here in Oregon, we hold our elections as if we don’t have dishonest people. Voter fraud happens in Chicago, we say, not here.
Pretty foolish, huh? A pretty naïve way to decide who will be the next president, governor, or mayor and decide the laws the rest of us must live under. I’m sure the founding fathers, with their more realistic view of fallen human nature, would have scoffed at such a system. They designed our entire government to provide checks and balances on man's basic tendency towards corruption.
So, how much voter fraud goes on with Oregon’s vote by mail system? Truth is, God only knows. Literally. But it could be a lot. One thing’s for sure, before other states follow suit, they need to look more carefully at the many vulnerabilities inherent in the system.
A study by a local college professor concluded that about 30,000 people signed other peoples’ ballots in a recent Oregon election. Of course, that didn’t include the ones who wouldn’t admit that they had broken the law. In 2000, Bush and Gore were separated by only about 6,000 votes here in Oregon. 30,000 is a lot of fraudulent votes, and could have decided the election.
The actual number could be much higher. If it’s not, give it time. As more people discover how easy it is to cheat and how unlikely it is that they will be caught, the fraud will increase and close elections will be decided by the cheats, not the real voters. That may have happened already.
The flaws in the vote by mail system work in reverse, too. The votes of real registered voters are discarded at will by county elections personnel. If a clerk is of the opinion that the signature on the vote by mail ballot doesn’t match the signature on the voter’s registration card, he nullifies the entire ballot.
Bear in mind that the elections clerks are novices at handwriting analysis and the signatures on the voter registration cards are often decades old and a person's handwriting changes over time. Nonetheless, if the clerk says the signatures don’t match, the entire ballot is nullified. Your vote didn't count. How often does this happen? God only knows.
Can you imagine the potential for corruption if just one staff person at the elections office chooses to decide the election single-handedly? (Granted, Oregon law requires clerks to attempt to contact voters, if possible, before nullifying their ballots because of non-matching signatures, but they must do so by 8:00 p.m. on election night. With huge numbers of ballots coming in on the last day of the election, there is simply no time for clerks to check the signatures and contact the voters in question. Decisions are final at 8:01 p.m.)
Recently, the taxpayer organization I run did an extensive sampling of nullified signatures on a statewide petition and found that almost all of the signatures the county elections staff had discarded for not matching were indeed valid. For more details, see my NewsWithViews column, “When Your Signature Doesn’t Count.”
When we challenged the nullification of perfectly valid signatures as a violation of the voters’ constitutional rights and delivered to the court sworn affidavits from the actual voters, the judge replied that state statutes give election clerks the discretion to decide whether signatures match and that their discretion is not reviewable. To have a clerk’s opinion overrule the sworn affidavit of the actual signer is an awful lot of power to give to a bureaucrat.
There are a lot of other vulnerabilities inherent in the vote by mail system, such as union voting parties with pressure to vote a certain way. Strangers from special interest groups picking up ballots and dropping them off for you. Or not. A dishonest postal worker “losing” a sack of mail from a voting precinct of a decidedly different persuasion. The possibilities for corruption are as endless as the imagination and creativity of the dishonest.
In the 2000 election, a fellow with a big, wooden box and a sign saying, “Drop Ballots Here,” stood on the sidewalk outside an auditorium where 12,000 voters were gathered to hear presidential candidate George W. Bush give a campaign speech. Attendees had been asked to bring their ballots to the rally and drop them off. Many did.
Problem was, no one knows who the guy on the sidewalk was. The real ballot drop-off box was a block ahead at the main entry. The guy with the big, wooden box made a hasty exit when a passerby asked him for identification. Along with him went a bunch of official ballots that trusting voters had deposited in his box.
No one knows if those ballots were dropped off at the elections office or the nearest dumpster. All those carefully considered decisions may have become mere trash.
There are a lot of good things one can say about vote by mail. Apparently, a solid majority of Oregon voters like it. Voting by mail is easier and more convenient than braving the November elements and waiting in line down at the precinct for your turn to vote. But if all this convenience puts the actual results of the election at risk, is that not too high a price to pay?
After all, if we do not insure that elections are decided by real live, eligible voters, why bother to hold them?
We lost something rather sacred when we stopped meeting with our neighbors down at the local precinct and waiting our turn in line to cast our ballots to determine together who our leaders would be and which ballot measures would pass or fail. We lost part of our sense of community.
I recommend you don't move to Portland, OR, and we won't move to Texas.
I reject you entire argument.
You are speaking in generalities, not specific to Oregon's system. People much smarter than you or me have thought through this, and have invested in technology to safeguard the system and encourage more voting participation BY EVERYONE (legally entitled to vote of course.) No, you cannot register to vote under false names unless you are running a much larger scam than falsely registering to vote. Registering to vote in Oregon ain't like in Texas or many other states.
And more specifically, voting by mail ballot will not allow intimidation at a voting place due to racial heritage by bigots or other self-appointed (self-anointed?) racist vigilantes who seek to hinder, deny, or challenge voting by any non-European descendant persons.
Your very long post, (which was well wordcrafted, btw, and I commend you for it) I dismiss as prepackaged dogma, useless, paranoid, overblown and more about voting in Texas and not to the point of this thread.... specifically: what was the voter turnout in your state as a percentage of registered voters?
Surely, someone able to compose a coherent post like you did can tell the difference between your state's problems versus other communities and how they apply solutions to their own problems. 3, 4 or 5 data points don't prove a universal mathematical formula.
Please keep the focus on Voter turnout, registered voter engagement in actual voting. And very much to the point, percentages of racial minorities, inner city, and economic disadvantaged neighborhoods participation in voting (not just registration drives, but actual voting.)
OT - Of course, the PP's cut and paste article was written by Bill Sizemore. Most every proposition Sizemore has put on the ballot has been defeated by knowledgeable Oregonians. Bill Sizemore has first hand knowledge about forgery.
Clip:
.... the Oregon Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court ruling confirming that Bill Sizemore engaged in fraud, forgery and racketeering in the signature gathering process. Sizemore's organizations remain liable for a multimillion dollar jury award owed to tens of thousands of Oregon school employees. Additionally, the high court confirmed the lower court's finding that Sizemore ran a sham charity organization.
Thursday's ruling came after repeated efforts by Sizemore to avoid the $2.5-million judgment issued against his organizations by a Multnomah County jury in 2002. Supreme Court confirms Bill Sizemore as racketeer - OregonLive.com
But still waiting to hear another state who claims high voter turnout to match or beat Oregon's voting turnout.
As you yourself say, it isn't "turnout" when you just have to mail them in. Comparing that to another state with "live" voting is apples and oranges.
I applaud your state (though why you, individually, feel this is something to "brag" on unless it was your personal idea, I'm not sure) for the high "turnout", but I share the worry that mail-in ballots would be easy to steal/fake/monkey with. How does a person know for sure that his/her ballot didn't "get lost in the mail".
Frankly, considering that they mail the ballots directly to you and you just mail them back, is "only" 69% such a good return rate?
As you yourself say, it isn't "turnout" when you just have to mail them in. Comparing that to another state with "live" voting is apples and oranges.
I applaud your state (though why you, individually, feel this is something to "brag" on unless it was your personal idea, I'm not sure) for the high "turnout", but I share the worry that mail-in ballots would be easy to steal/fake/monkey with. How does a person know for sure that his/her ballot didn't "get lost in the mail".
Frankly, considering that they mail the ballots directly to you and you just mail them back, is "only" 69% such a good return rate?
I believe that once in the hands of the US Postal Service, any tampering would not only be very much against Postal Employee rules, but subject to sever punishment. My take is the USPS employees are honest and honorable and many would be insulted by your implication of 'getting lost in the mail' or 1st class mail being opened and tampered with. I'm not, nor never been, an employee of the USPS, so I really don't know just how insulting your post is to them, their union, and their honor and good name as US Citizens.
And don't forget, the technology used electronically compares the signature on the outside of the returned ballot envelope with 2 other signatures on file with Oregon's government. If a problem, the ballot is kicked out for human review of the signature. Only after the signature and the address is validated against voter registration, is the envelope opened.
There may be other safeguards. I don't know, but am lead to believe these other safeguards are kept confidential, if they exist.
And, yes, I do brag for my community, even if I only moved here recently. Just as some brag about our college football team the U of Oregon which is doing so well this year, and trust me, a 60 year old man has nothing to do with the 'Ducks' football team success on the field.
And yes, the number of ballots returned is still IMO, a high percentage, and is a point of civic pride and worthy of my community's bragging rights. Don't forget, voting ballots mailed out should not be forwarded by USPS, as moving voids the voter registration, if the registration isn't updated with new address before the deadline.
Who won the US House seats in my county is another bragging point, but for another thread.
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