One of my friends asked me to describe how we vote in Oregon. Sorry to disappoint. It’s so boring. There are no horrors to report. Nothing to clutch your pearls over. We just vote and have been doing so this way since 1998. The picture avove may or may not be of the the one I use but it does look like the one in the parking lot right outside our local library in Hillsboro. As you can see, I can (and do) drive-by vote!
Now for my voting booth. Well, my desk is kinda messy right now… My spouse used the dining table this session. So I guess we have two booths in our house. So how does it work?
I never registered to vote here.
That is true. I didn’t. When we moved here we, like everyone else we had to get our vehicles re-registered and we had to get Oregon driver’s licenses. No surprise. We all have to do that in the state we live. But Oregon registers you to vote when you register your car. The elections bit was the easiest part of going to the DMV. But, you say, how do we know you are who you say you are? I ask back, how does the DMV know? I think you can figure that out. And there has to be a very important bit of information verified — my primary residence address. Did I have to present, say my birth certificate to verify that I wasn’t born in Kenya or some other place not American? Well, California did that 60 years ago and Oregon asked California. So, Oregon knows who I am and where I live.
But what about voter fraud?
Well, consider this. There has been only one case of sufficient election fraud to (potentially) influence and election. And the GOP did it. Vote fraud, particularly fraud that can throw an election is actually hard to do as an individual. You need a crew to do it because you need to mess with lots of votes. Lots. Like what Republican operatives did in North Carolina. Imagine me getting a bunch of my buddies together, we all go to multiple polling stations and vote multiple times. Do the math. If the polls are open like they are in California from 7am to 8pm, that gives me 13 hours to do the deed. Think about driving all over town, standing in line, signing stuff, filling out a long ballot (they are for big elections we care about), rinse and repeat. That is all day and even if I hit every station in the city/county, I’d get maybe 12 to 24 votes cast. In a city of 60,000? Like that would matter? Really? And not get noticed? They are but drops in the bucket. It is a whole lot easier to just go around and convince friends and neighbors to vote for my candidate. But that is democracy isn’t it? Real fraud, GOP scale fraud involves defrauding voters on a larger scale. But I digress.
So how secure is vote by mail?
That is easy. Vote by mail is actually more secure.
- My ballot is mailed directly to me at my primary residence. That is why the DMV is involved. To do any fraud at scale, you have to get your hands on lots of ballots — like the GOP does. There are only two in my mailbox. One for me and one for my spouse. And breaking into my mailbox is a federal felony, not that would stop a party operative. But that is for only one or two ballots per mailbox. I think someone in the neighborhood would notice.
- Since the ballot goes directly to my home, only I get to use it. If I’m dead I suppose other folks in my household could fill it out. But that is still one vote. And the DMV knows your dead sometimes before you do. And they pass the information on to the elections people. My guess is that if you die more that a few months before the election, the elections people won’t even mail one out with your name on it. That is a pretty small window which makes it really hard to do it even twice.
- There is also a process for voting when homeless so they don’t get left out.
- Once I mail or deposit my ballot, everything else in the system is the same. And if you notice the details in the linked article, this is where the GOP goons attacked.
How does it work?
The process is really simple. Since it is all by mail, at every election the same events happen. For example, the primary just this month (May 19, 2020) during the COVID-19 lockdown required no changes from any other election.
Late March
The voter pamphlet gets mailed out one month+ prior to the election. That’s the newsprint booklet with candidate bios, proposition writeups including all the pro/con arguments published by the state. It is one per household. In our area it is pretty big. You have to note the headings so that you can ignore stuff that doesn’t apply like the bio of the mayor of the next town over or the fire department funding measure for the special district outside of town in farming country at the other end of the county.
mid April
We got our ballots around the third week in April. That gives us three weeks to decide stuff. What did we get in the envelope?
- There is a postage paid envelope to return the ballot. It is postage paid so instead of the dropoff, I can just put it in the mailbox on our block without hunting down a stamp. The back of it has my name and address printed and a signature block for me to sign. There is also a block for the person to sign if I needed help to fill out the ballot. More on that below.
- There is a “privacy” envelope/folder. If you want, you can put your ballot in that. This is so that when the elections people open up the envelopes (with my name on the back), the ballot contents is hidden in its own little folder. And yes, their procedures, just like the counting procedures everywhere, are monitored. Once opened, they are separated never to meet again.
- Finally there is the ballot paper(s). These are letter sized sheets (we had two this time around) with candidates/measures on both sides. Just fill in the appropriate bubble for each candidate/measure with blue or black ink. The hardest part is just like coloring. Stay within the lines… There is no “sample ballot”. There is no need. You’ve got the real one.
The process is just like in the voting booth except you are not rushed or have to fill out a ballot in a tiny, flimsy “booth” while juggling your “sample ballot” (and dropping it on the floor). You can even have a cup of coffee while you vote in the morning or a beer if you do so after lunch. You have to supply the blue or black pen. Once it is all filled out, the ballot goes into the privacy envelope (optional) and then the whole lot goes into the mailing envelope. Seal it and sign it. You are done except for depositing it. We use the box like you see above because that saves the county the postage. I love the USPS but not as much as my local government. In previous elections we did the deed when we went over to that side of town on Sundays. This time we took the trip out of necessity. Cabin fever is a terrible thing and the trip was a nice drive and change of scenery.
may 19
This is election day. Your ballot has to be in by 8pm this day. See the details here. I didn’t notice before I wrote this because we have 3 weeks to do it all and we usually get it done the week before so we can deposit it on the weekend. (End of) voting is on a Tuesday.
What about I need help?
One question I was asked is how does this work for people with disabilities. There are a number of options. And instead of enumerating them here, just look at the source. There are multiple options for Voter Assistance.
One Last Thing…
There will be lots of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) thrown about on this subject. This is done by those who do not want you or me to vote. We will not be able to shut them up. Just remember that they are not our friends and do not have our best interests in mind. Their minds are bloody with the craving for power and have shown so since the founding of the country. My personal position is two-fold. First, everyone has the duty, not the right or privilege, the duty to vote. It is like jury duty; in both you vote on something important to society. If you live here and will/are affected by what our government would do, you not only should have a say but you must speak up. Otherwise you and I are not living in a democracy. It would be something else, something our ancestors had to live under and then left to come here. Yes, this includes felons and immigrants. To say they don’t have the right is the same as saying I or you do not have the right. Think of it as a civics lesson for them. Second, the crime that should be punished is the attempt to prevent someone from voting. If we have the duty and another interferes, there should be consequences for them preventing us from doing our duty.
If you want to see an even better way to do it look here. The Australians looked at the U.S. and the UK did it when they were putting together their own independent government and did not like what they saw. They have been doing it this way since 1913. With vote by mail, we in Oregon have much better turnout than other states but they have been getting 85-90% turnout since 1928. Check it out, especially how preferential voting works and how their elections are truly independent of political pressure, free from gerrymandering, and consistent throughout the country.