The Democratic leadership of King County and the
King County Department of Elections are pushing for 100% vote by mail. Oregon State is cited as role model. Many of us
local election integrity activists oppose this action. We even wrote a
resolution for party caucus (which more or less got slaughtered in committees).
dailyKos user horsewithnoname called bullshit on my opposition. I replied that we're still researching and that I'll post our work as able. This is just a quick note, to share some stuff I've found thus far. (I'll post our "complete" work later.)
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Email
posted to Washington Citizens for Fair Elections and elsewhere:
Howdy-
As most everyone here knows, the leadership of King County Washington is pushing for 100% vote by mail. Many of us election integrity activists oppose this.
I finally found some (hopefully) solid research on the impact of "no excuses absentee balloting" (aka vote by mail) and voter turnout. Quick summary: Vote by mail doesn't increase turnout and probably actually hurts it. Oregon's 100% state-wide vote by mail is explicitly examined. Vote by mail carries with it many other risks.
Making It Easier Doesn't Work: No Excuse Absentee and Early Voting; Hurt Voter Turnout; Create Other Problems
Curtis Gans (Committee for the Study of the American Electorate) September 2004
Early Voting, Unrestricted Absentee Voting, and Voting by Mail
Mark Hansen (National Commission on Federal Election Reform) July 2001
I found the first paper via Vote By Mail on Wikipedia. They're also linked via the Issues: Early Voting section on Reform Elections. You'll see that many other aspects of vote by mail have also been studied.
I'm trying to contact Curtis Gans. The paper posted online doesn't include the charts and graphs. I'm hoping to find where it's been published in full, whether it's been peer-reviewed or not, and any citations. Any and all research help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Cheers, Jason Osgood / Seattle WA
Here's the money citation from the first report, Making it Easier Doesn't Work by Curtis Gans:
Contrary to their backers’ expectations and defying conventional wisdom, two relatively new and spreading voting reforms aimed at making it easier to vote and theoretically increasing participation no excuse absentee voting and early voting actually hurt voter turnout.
In virtually every election since 1988 — both Presidential and mid-terms the states which adopted these reforms in the aggregate had poorer turnout performances (lesser increases in years of turnout increase; greater decreases in years of turnout decline) than states which did not adopt these procedures.
And these reforms, along with all-mail balloting adopted in 1998 by the state of Oregon for all of its elections, pose other risks to the health of the American political system.
[Updated: to add quote.]