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.