Reply #17: Voter Apathy? And other reasons for low turnout in Oregon [View All]

"Vote by mail takes away focus from election day. I forgot."
http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2006/05/22/daily38.html

Which is what the longer term studies out of England show, that over the long run VBM actually decreases turnout. While the paper I posted a link to argues that it has already been hurting turnout nation-wide, and in Oregon.

The chain of custody issue, is that too many transfers are taking place. I will happily explain that in detail when I have more time. But the same argument can be made with Touch Screens, which is essentially, "trust us". With VBM you have to trust lots of hand offs, and ballot transfers. With precinct level hand counts you only have to trust the "many eyes" system of everyone voting in the same place, same day, and then counting the votes without any transfers.

You know, I'm not a huge fan of the secret ballot, but we should at least discuss the issue before we go to VBM nationwide and eliminate it.

There's numerous cases of vote-buying with absentees as well. All you need is for someone to sign their ballot and then sell it blank. It's very traditional to buy votes, when you can be sure of what you are buying. And with even 20% that don't vote, and probably don't care that much, they might part with a signed ballot for very little money.