Connie Trier notes in a Friday letter several clear advantages of mail-in voting and asks why anyone wouldn’t want to.
I won’t dispute that there are many advantages (though contrary to the letter, they do hold up the process, as they take significantly more time to tabulate). And I won’t say we should get rid of it, especially for those people who require it. But there are several reasons why mail voting is a bad idea.
The first is symbolic: Many of us want to stand up and be counted, to publicly show our support for and participation in the democratic process, which is a right that many people – even as recently as the 1960s – did not have. You may not find this important, but many of us do.
The second is practical: Mail balloting is simply more prone to error.
Just on Friday, a mail ballot was found in King County where the person who signed it was different from the person it was addressed to; clearly, no signature verification took place, yet it was counted anyway.
And worse yet, more chances for error means more chances for fraud.
What this boils down to is civil rights: the right to stand up and be counted, the right to know that my vote will be properly tabulated, and the right to know that someone else is not diminishing my vote by cheating through the very abusable mail-in voting process.
Mail-in voting is easier. It’s more convenient. But it is less democratic, because a democracy is only as good as it accurately represents the will of the voters.
Chris Nandor
Arlington
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