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Caldara: Swiss system suffers from one gaping
hole
January 9, 2005 Given the speed of counting the ballots in Boulder on the last
election, we should know the winner sometime before their term ends.
For a variety of reasons, Boulder's new voting system is the slowest in
Colorado, and maybe the nation, to tally. But on the other hand, it is
really expensive.
A couple of Boulder citizens have been making noise about changing the
way we vote. And they are on to something worth considering. In the last
week Joe Pezzillo and Peter Richards have been parading around a very
pleasant Swiss guy who runs elections in, of all places, Switzerland.
He keeps showing up places with Swiss chocolate, also known as the
legal cocaine, so everyone is willing to listen. (First one is always
free.)
The Swiss have a rather simple way of voting. It consists of mail-in
ballots, which is a horrendously bad idea, and an easy-to-count,
easy-to-recount ballot, which seems to be a good idea.
Most American ballots, including Boulder's, have one large ballot with
a lot of candidate races and questions like referendums, initiatives and
tax increases listed on it. The Swiss system has a small ballot for each
question or race. If there are 10 ballot questions in an election, a voter
gets 10 separate dollar-bill sized ballots with one question each.
Let's take a very simple example, a yes-or-no tax question, "Shall the
city of Boulder raise sales tax 67-percent to fund the building of a
five-star resort for displaced prairie dogs?" The ballot only has this
question on it and a "yes" box and a "no" box. The voter marks the ballot
with a pen, crayon or lamb's blood.
When all the ballots are cast they are separated by hand into two
piles, one for all the "yes" votes and one for the "nos." Boulder's
current fancy ballots are read by scanning machines that kick out so many,
they have to be read by hand anyway.
Here's the money-saving part: The dollar-bill-sized ballots in the
"yes" and "no" stacks are then run through a currency counter (just like
you'd find at a bank) to tally them up. Unlike waiting weeks for our
over-priced high-tech scanning machines to kick out ballots that need to
be hand counted, the Swiss have their election results in about three
hours. Our prairie dogs could be relaxing in little prairie-dog hot tubs
and getting little prairie-dog massages that much sooner.
It is a simple, verifiable and inexpensive system with a paper trail
and could work well for Boulder.
The part that shouldn't be used is the mail-in delivery of ballots.
The Swiss don't have voter registration. They just send their little
ballots to every eligible voter.
Sending ballots out in the mail like grocery-store coupons is not the
most secure way to run a democracy. Proponents of mail ballots argue that
the increased voter turnout from the convenience of voting at home
overcomes comes any little problems like fraud.
Looking at the situation in Washington state, where the governor's race
keeps flip-flopping on every recount, proves the need for integrity in
polling.
Here we have an illusion of voter integrity. State law now requires
some form of identification to vote. Mail-in ballots require a signature.
But a signature is not a form of identification. I learned in grade school
how to forge my old man's signature like a world-class con artist. That
didn't make me him.
For many, mail-in ballots take away the cherished tradition of secret
voting. There is no real way to measure voter intimidation, which is why
America moved to private voting
booths where a wife's abusive Republican husband can't see her vote
Democrat.
Voting should be an individual event, not a group sport. Mail-ins lend
themselves to "voting parties" in union halls and church hall where voters
can "get help" understanding the issues in a group setting.
Anyone ever wonder why some nursing homes have such high voter turnout?
Personally, I think running a secure, intimidation-free election is a
pretty small price to pay for democracy. I am not arguing for bringing
back the draft or anything. I'm just saying that civic duty should include
getting off your butt, going to a secure location, showing an ID and
voting in private.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Golden. He
lives in Boulder and can be reached at
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