The Sunday, January 6, New York Times Magazine cover story was about the disappointing results of the electronic voting technologies implemented by many states after the passage of the Help America Vote Act, which resulted from the problems identified in the 2000 Presidential and Congressional elections.

I have always believed that government officials and businesses get too enamored of the latest and greatest technology, without recognizing and trying to retain the benefits of older technologies. Pitney Bowes has strongly believed that the most secure system of all is voting by mail, which supplements traditional paper-based ballots with state-of-the-art address management software and ballot tracking and tracing systems.

The biggest problem identified in the article was the quirkiness and unpredictability of computer-based systems, which fail in unexpected ways on election days, because of the large number of people using them. The kinds of misuse possible when tens or hundreds of millions of people use a system are not all predictable, and, therefore, not preventable. This Freedom to Tinker blog post clarifies some points made in the article in reference to this topic.

The other problem not identified in the article, but equally contributory to the challenges of getting an accurate vote count is the fact that this electronic technology is designed to be used within a 12-15 hour window on one day. Errors are hard to detect, and breakdowns are extremely difficult to correct in that short a time window.

A voting-by-mail system, by its nature, stretches the voting process over a several-week period. It is simple to use, tolerant of errors, and it will fail, if it does, in predictable ways that can be prevented through sophisticated technological design. Moreover, because it is a system that is used over a several-week period, errors can be detected and corrected in virtually all cases without a disastrous impact in a short time window. It has the great advantage of producing a secure paper trail. Finally, it eliminates the challenges and headaches of provisional ballets.

The Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote™ system is elegantly simple. Every ballot is sent to a single registered voter. The ballot can be tracked all the way to the letter carrier’s bag, using the Postal Service’s CONFIRM technology, which scans mail every time it goes through a sorter. The voter is supplied with a pre-bar-coded return envelope, and the ballot is mailed back at the voter’s choice.

To prevent fraud, signatures on the envelope can be compared by the incoming mail sortation system with the signature already on file, which assists the election inspectors that have to deal with signature verification issues. Since one ballot is sent per voter and no more than one can be received back, there is no risk of a single individual voting more than one time.

Opponents of voting by mail sometimes make the argument that individuals can be bribed or coerced into voting a certain way when they are filling out the ballot, whereas in-person voting has tight controls that prevent coercion at the polling place. The best solution for the coercive vote is to give the voter the ability to rescind the vote mailed in at any time up to an election day deadline. By allowing voters to rescind their choices and vote in person on or up to election day, election officials can also address another concern of early voting by mail, the argument that voters may not absorb all of the relevant information from the candidates or from proponents of referenda late in the campaign before they cast their vote.

Proponents of in-person voting can retain that option, while allowing no-excuses voting by mail, but I believe that if security and confidence in the election results is the highest-priority goal, secure voting by mail is the best solution.

The Election Law blog cites a useful report issued by Common Cause, which reviews the benefits of vote by mail elections, as well as proposed solutions for potential problems cited by opponents.

There may be other reasons to retain in-person voting, especially if it is allowed to be done over a several-week period, as is the case in Texas, but “no-excuses” voting by mail should always be an option.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Citizen Engagement, Mailstream, Voting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.