Ralph --
I was not trying to be arrogant, I was just making a statement of fact.
Here is another statement of fact -- the following sentence is an enigma:
The most appropriate voting method is the one where we can match a living
breathing eligible citizen with an anonymous ballot.
If one matches a living breathing eligible citizen with an anonymous ballot,
the ballot is no longer anonymous. That is indeed the enigma of the voting
problem, which is unresolvable. Anonymous voting is the reason for many of
the problems you have described, but the reasons for anonymous voting
currently outweigh the need to eliminate it (though some feel it should be
eliminated, I am not among them). Some countries do not have anonymous voting
-- in the UK, all ballots are numbered, and an election officer can later
bring your ballot to you and ask you to validate it. I do not believe that
this is something we want to encourage in the USA (especially in a climate
where federal prosecutors are losing their jobs because it is not in
lock-step with the executive branch's position).
In general, this email dialogue has been mixing apples and oranges and pears
and mangoes, and this is causing the problem we are having in communicating.
Here are some examples: problems related to aspects of voting (such as
absenteeism, anonymity) are not the same as considering the lack of effective
procedures for that aspect; problems with the status quo in elections are
directly rooted in the laws and customs that keep that status quo in force
and need to be addressed by changing those laws and customs; and the way to
eliminate problems with election fraud is not to make it harder to vote, but
rather to make it harder to commit election fraud.
For example, the NJ procedure for permanent absentees does send out an "are
you there" message to permanent absentees, and there's a form that has to be
returned each year (yes, it could be fradulated, but this would be a felony).
NJ may be unique in sending out a sample ballot to ALL registered voters for
all municipal elections and primaries. It is also illegal for the post office
to deliver that sample ballot if the person no longer resides at that
location. The post office must return the sample ballot to the county, who
marks the registrant in the book. If the post office is corrupt and returns
ballots improperly, and the people shows up to vote (or tries to register as
an absentee), they will be required to demonstrate proof of residence, but
they can still vote. Blah, blah, blah, etc. Procedures.
The devil is in the details. If you have no effective procedures for making
sure that dead people or non-residents are not continuing to vote, then you
can be sure that they will be voting in the precincts as well as by absentee.
As well, if the laws regarding buying votes or coercion are not properly
enforced, then such things as "voting parties" may occur. As I said, I vote
absentee. I know how I voted, I know that nobody bought or sold my vote or
changed it up to the point when my ballot was cast, I know my vote was cast
securely and anonymously, and I have strong reason to believe that it will be
hand-counted in the event of a recount. Unfortunately, I have NONE of these
assurances if I vote in my precinct. Yes, it would be great to have even MORE
assurances (such as ones that confirm that my vote did not disappear) but I
am not willing to give up my anonymous ballot in order to gain those
assurances, so at the point of casting my ballot I must trust the procedures
and laws and expect that they will be enforced.
It is the responsibility of your citizens to make sure that your absentees
have the same confidence in your absentee system as I do here in New Jersey.
Cleaning up the corruption through prosecution of any corrupt election
officials would be the first step. Changing the laws would be the second
step. Making sure that the procedures adequately address the intention of the
laws would be the third step. All of these steps can (and should) be worked
on in parallel.
I hope you all can recognize that I am not shrugging off your concerns or
complaints. What I am saying, though, is that you need to define where these
problems fall (procedures, laws, customs, politics, etc.), and then address
them appropriately, rather than just fling up your hands and say that "since
there are problems with absentee ballots we should get rid of absentee
ballots." You must differentiate what the sources of the problems are first,
which is what I am not seeing in the emails from your group yet. If you go
back through all of this exchange and separate out the issues and identify
the different sources of the various problems, I think that will help put the
direction for the solutions into focus.
I regret that I am quite busy, so I will not have time to further dialogue
here, but I encourage you all to continue the discussion and do feel free to
keep me on the cc list of this thread.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Mercuri.