Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a report on Deanron's proposal for mail-only voting: "Mail-vote ballots for everyone in King County next year".
But before I get to the details of the P-I article, let us review one of the main arguments in favor of mail-only voting.
King County Councilman Bob Ferguson, August 12, 2004: "Establishing one voting system will save significant tax dollars for King County".
Sam Reed, March 16, 2005 "Vote-by-mail elections ... cut governmental costs by 20 to 30 percent"
Deanron's hand-picked "independent" task force on elections, July 27, 2005: "vote by-mail provides for significant ... costs savings"
Deanron, December 21, 2005 "By closing more than 500 polling places staffed by up to 4,000 temporary workers, [Deanron] said, his proposal would save the county money"
But today we learn that none of the above is true. Actually we learned it back in July when Pierce County rejected all-mail voting partly because it would be more expensive. But Deanron himself finally admits in today's P-I that "a vote-by-mail system won't save money"
added printing, mailing and processing costs would more than offset savings from eliminating poll-worker payroll and poll-site rentalsGo figure. More details on the extra cost of mail voting are in Deanron's report. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 09, 2006 09:50 AM | Email This
It costs more to send ballot stuffers to each precinct polling location.
Now 1 or 2 trusted stuffers can work at a central location.
A much cheaper and efficient way to steal elections. Less overhead, less chance of getting caught. Tighter control over number of ballots lost, and ballots stuffed so thy won't have over-counts to explain in the future.
Posted by: JCM on February 9, 2006 09:58 AMWhen, what is the number, over 10,000, votes are "found" and there is no reason given, when KCE covers up, stonewalls, and defies the law and doesn't release public documents, what else can we believe? I don't wear a tinfoil hat, gave mine away. But the more this goes on the more I'm forced to conclude that someone grabbed a stack of blank ballots, a fist full of pens, and "created" enough votes to steal the gov's election. It's not good enough to just fill in the (D) blank, you have to provide cover and throw in a statistically proportional number of (R) votes.
I'm not against all absentee voting, per se., but it's like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys...disaster will result.
75% of "registered" voters self disenfranchised.
Per the report, anywhere between .15% and .40% of voters didn't vote for any particular issue on the ballot (if 10000 ballots were returned, there would be only 9985 votes, or less, for an issue)
On ballots with more than 2 items, the non vote would be dramitically higher. In five school districts, the third (and 4th) items on the ballot had far fewer votes (turn the ballot over...). For example, Lake Washington had a front side nonvote rate of about .35% and a page two nonvote rate of 5.83%. Northshore was worse, .34% and 6.48%.
More self disenfranchisement, probably abetted by the mail in ballot.
With the legislature and Mrs. Gregoire being so cozy with the unions, I wonder when a law will pass (with the emergency clause) requireing all union members to list the union office as their mailing address for mail in ballots.....
Posted by: SouthernRoots on February 9, 2006 10:26 AMHow many post marks from Mexico are too many?
Maybe if I send the ballot from mexico with the words "Hide for 2 weeks, then do not count Illegal voter" I can be assured that I will get my vote counted and my voice will be heard.
Most of the skullduggery Deanron engaged in during the 2004 general election canvassing to put illegitimate ballots into the vote tabulation was done with absentee ballots. (Yes, there were some of the same tricks pulled with provisional ballots, but that's to be expected since they are processed like absentee ballots once placed into their envelopes by the voters.) The cost of vote-by-mail is more than the dollars that are spent -- it also costs us the integrity of our election process.
By the way, can someone ask Deanron what "leverage" and "leveraged" mean in his report? According to my dictionary, those words don't mean what Deanron appears to think they mean.
Posted by: Micajah on February 9, 2006 12:28 PMThe LofWV of MD took issue with the lack of privacy: The League of Women Voters stands for voting opportunities which are secure, accessible, accurate and recountable. Absentee ballots are two of these: accessible and recountable. They may not be secure or accurate. Absentee ballots have definite privacy issues. We don’t know the environment in which they are completed. There can be spouses, employers, parents, caregivers or others looking over the shoulder, coaching, advising, threatening, collecting, mailing or failing to mail-–all not preventable. We don’t know if a ballot will be mailed or delivered if carried away by a person other than the voter.
If the MD LofWV can see the danger posed to the secret ballot when voting by mail, there's at least some reason to hope. Maybe some of their thoughts will trickle west.
Posted by: Micajah on February 9, 2006 03:09 PM"When, what is the number, over 10,000, votes are "found" and there is no reason given, when KCE covers up, stonewalls, and defies the law and doesn't release public documents, what else can we believe? I don't wear a tinfoil hat, gave mine away. But the more this goes on the more I'm forced to conclude that someone grabbed a stack of blank ballots, a fist full of pens, and "created" enough votes to steal the gov's election. It's not good enough to just fill in the (D) blank, you have to provide cover and throw in a statistically proportional number of (R) votes."
The above re-creation of the 2004 election shows clearly that elections here are corrupted to the core and that all-mail voting will shield these commonplace election-stealing tactics by the Democrat machine from the public's eye. That's the way it is in corrupt King County, WA.
Posted by: KS on February 9, 2006 09:14 PM