Three cheers for Snohomish County Councilmen Gary Nelson, John Koster and Jeff Sax for rejecting the recommendation of County Auditor Bob Terwilliger to make Snohomish one of the next jurisdictions in Washington to adopt vote-by-mail for all future elections. These men have taken the time to study the evidence and reports from people who know something about vote-by-mail and its history.
People have lost faith in Washington’s elections system. And while vote-by-mail is popular with the voters, and easier on county auditors, it is fraught with possibilities for fraud that can only further undermine people’s perceptions of electoral fairness.
We need look no further south than the 2004 fiasco in King County to see how sloppiness and dishonesty can swing a close election, whether it is for governor or a seat on the school board.
The National Commission on Election Reform, chaired by former presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, warned in 2001 that voter fraud schemes from the past are even more likely now. According to the commission’s report, “opportunities to commit such frauds are actually growing because of the trend toward more permissive absentee voting.”
The report went on, “Growing use of absentee voting has turned this area of voting into the most likely opportunity for election fraud now encountered by law enforcement officials.”
Why then would Terwilliger ask the County Council to embrace such a system?
In Oregon, voters report ballot boxes at postal offices were just sitting in the open – an obvious invitation to fraud. There is nothing in place to prevent people from registering to vote at more than one address with a slight variation in name, and the chances of being caught are slim.
Your ballot could be stolen from your mailbox, postal workers could tamper with it, or someone might “guide” you in your vote as may have happened in some Washington mental institutions last year.
The King County experience in 2004 demonstrates that even when your ballot makes it to the elections office, there is no certainty that it will be counted. Elections officials there admitted during the Gregoire election trial that they certified false reports because they had no idea how many absentee ballots were printed, mailed out or returned. Several hundred more votes were counted than voters credited with voting.
Mexico had one of the most corrupt elections systems in the world for nearly 100 years, but in 2004 it sent observers to the U.S. to monitor our elections, looking for fraud. Mexico spent $1 billion in the 1990s to clean up the voter rolls, and issued 59 million new, tamper-proof voter ID cards complete with holograms and thumbprints. In order to join the voter rolls, new voters have to present a series of documents proving who they are, where they live, and their eligibility to vote.
But in Washington, we are rushing into a system that is less accountable; where felons who have not had their rights restored, the deceased and non-citizens all vote.
Mail-in ballots are popular with voters. About 70 percent of Washingtonians, and 61 percent of Snohomish County voters, vote by mail. But we must never sacrifice security of the ballot and integrity of election outcomes simply for our own convenience.
Betty Neighbors is a business and community leader and a lifelong resident of Snohomish County.
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