Sound Politics: Mail Ballot Horror Show (XIII): Thousands of disenfranchised voters

September 12, 2006

Mail Ballot Horror Show (XIII): Thousands of disenfranchised voters

Today's Everett Herald: "Voter error may kill 1 in 5 ballots"

Thousands of primary ballots will not be counted in partisan races because Snohomish County voters failed to follow directions ... the voters didn't pick their party affiliation - a task of connecting the front and back of an arrow with a simple line.

There are two things wrong here: the way the partisan primary ballot is implemented and the fact that voters are forced to vote by mail. Officials are claiming that state law requires the voter to explicitly mark their choice of party and that merely casting votes in only one of the party's races is insufficient to declare one's party affiliation. But my read of this statute suggests otherwise:

(c) A voter's affiliation with a major political party will be inferred from the act of voting the party ballot for that major political party

And it's fundamentally retarded user interface design to force the user to take more steps than necessary to express their instructions. If a voter votes exclusively in, say, the Democrat primary races, then the equipment should be programmed to accept their ballot as a Democrat ballot. But most of the fault here is with vote-by-mail. If a voter mismarks her ballot at a polling place, the tabulator can give the voter instant feedback that there was an error and the voter can correct it. With vote-by-mail, the voter receives no feedback and no opportunity to correct any mistakes.

Snohomish County voters who do not appreciate being forced to vote by mail can still vote in person, details here

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 12, 2006 10:04 AM | Email This

Comments

1. Why can't they determine "VOTER INTENT" in picking a party with which to affiliate? If they mark only Democrat candidates or only Republican candidates, the machine should pick the appropriate party for them. If marks appear to be made for candidates of both parties, the ballot should go to the canvassing board and be carefully scrutinized to see if an intent to pick one party over the other is manifested in any way.

LET EVERY VOTE COUNT!

Posted by: Richard Pope on September 12, 2006 10:29 AM

2. I view this as a good thing. I found the instructions to be quite simple. If a voter is not capable of handling these simple instructions, then they should not be voting. Voluntary suffrage.

A Representative Republic does require an informed and intelligent electorate. I frankly don't want ignorant or emotional voters voting. I don't want someone voting because they hang out with people who think it is cool to hate George Bush as opposed to forming rational opinions for mistakes that Bush may have made. And yet, there's a huge amount of emotional voter identification.

If this simple hurdle culls the herd, so much the better.

Posted by: Jeff B. on September 12, 2006 10:46 AM

3. I found the ballot instructions to be very simple. I am not a college gradaute, I am just a low-life military veteran whom the liberal democrats just loathe. HA HA HA HA HA!!! :o)

Posted by: Raylene on September 12, 2006 11:23 AM

4. graduate! Sorry about the error! :o)

Posted by: Raylene on September 12, 2006 11:25 AM

5. I messed mine up; its not that clear, if you (like me) don't worry about reading the owners manual.

Posted by: righton on September 12, 2006 12:01 PM

6. mine came with a collector baseball card of Dean Logan; wonder what it will go for on eBay? and how did they hide the (brilliant) on-the-envelope-outside signature area? with extra origami folding instructions; how did that pass all the ADA lawsuits? gotta love Snohomish County;

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on September 12, 2006 12:48 PM

7. You quoted part of subsection (2) of the statute. Go back and read subsection (1), which is the one that applies to "consolidated" ballots. Subsection (2) applies only when the county chooses to mail separate ballots to voters for each of the major political party primary elections. Subsection (1) applies when the primaries are consolidated into one ballot -- and subsection (1) gives no discretion to the canvassing board or anyone else to try to overcome the absence of a party affiliation mark on the ballot by determining voter intent about party affiliation. It simply requires the voters to mark a party affiliation on that consolidated ballot.

The Kitsap Sun reports that about 13 percent of ballots received so far have not included a mark in the space needed to choose a party -- and it's a consolidated ballot, so there is no choice within the statute to do anything other than not count those votes.

Posted by: Micajah on September 12, 2006 01:03 PM

8. Ironic. If they don't mark the republican or democrat preference then, regardless of all their votes being for one party, their ballot won't count. The instructions looked pretty clear to me, but we've always had these types of instructions an when some voters obviously coudn't follow them. In KC, the canvassing board would have taken these and discerned voter intent......

Maybe the problem is that the selection is called "Party Preference" and since there is not a "None of the Above" selection, they don't fill it out....

Posted by: SouthernRoots on September 12, 2006 01:23 PM

9. I think they should add a multiple choice question to the November ballot: What city is the capitol of North Dakota? An answer would be all that would be required to validate the ballot. I bet that half of the ballots would be rejected.

We also need a contest to see who can write the most colorful anti-Bush screed on their ballot this November? They could post the most vitriolic as an art exhibit at the new downtown library. That's not part of the ballot instructions, but you can bet it's going to happen as sure as the sun will rise.

Posted by: Jeff B. on September 12, 2006 02:22 PM

10. primal question--who's the person/company that designed the ballot? will they feel any heat for voter confusion? any ties to politicians? if a ballot is confusing, it shouldn't be--someone designed it; but--they cashed their check long ago;

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on September 12, 2006 03:46 PM

11. and another thing while i vent--

people are taught every day to inject themselves with insulin or operate fairly sophisitcated home medical equipment;

so--when someone says they can't understand a ballot or find the voting process difficult, i ask why? is injecting insulin harder than voting? should it be? go figure--

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on September 12, 2006 03:50 PM

12. I filled out my mail-in ballot correctly, sealed it up, and waited for the community collection centers to open, rather than mailing it. During the wait, I changed my mind about one of my Supreme Court votes.

So when I found out on Monday that the County Auditor's office has four voting machines available for voters to use, I stopped by, parked in the 30-minutes parking spot, went up and voted. As soon as I had my little plastic smart-card to stick in the machine, I tore up my mail-in ballot and gave it to them to dispose of.

The voting machines openned on 8 Sept, and they're available during normal openning hours of (I think) 0830 to 1700 every day until the 19th, when openning hours will be extended to 8pm. If you're inside the building by 8pm, they have to let you vote on the machines, no matter how long it takes.

Posted by: gmcraff on September 12, 2006 05:25 PM

13. I guess that Spokane County chose the non-consolidated ballot approach. We received 3 ballots (I am laughing at the possibilities of that!)

1. Democrat
2. Republican
3. Non-partisan

If you vote the Democrat or Republican ballot, the non-partisan offices are listed on the back of the ballot for both the Democrat and Republican ballots.

By selecting a ballot labeled Democrat, Republican or non-partisan, we are selecting a party affiliation (or not).

So what do we do with the extra ballots? Vote again? Or just sell them on eBay?

Posted by: Ed on September 12, 2006 08:45 PM

14. Ed--this is like a summer intern printing & mailing out 3 different pizza flyers--1 for each of the 3 toppings they serve;

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on September 13, 2006 11:28 AM

15. I don't know how the ballots are laid out in other parts of the state, but here in Kitsap Co. the partisan positions are on opposite sides of the ballot -- Democratic on one side and Republican on the other. The non partisan selections folow the Republican ones on that side of the ballot. However, the block to choose whether you are voting D or R is on the Democrat Side.
I wonder how many Republicans reflexively turned to their side of the ballot and completed voting without seeing the place to choose a party?
I understand that the Auditor has refused a request from the Kitsap Republican Party to determine whether there was a statistically significant rejection of Republican ballots compared to Democratic ballots.

Posted by: Bob Benze on September 13, 2006 07:00 PM