Safeguards absent for absentee voting
July 16th, 2008 by David ShapiroI usually favor efforts to boost voter participation by making registration and voting easier, but I’m nervous about Senate Bill 156 passed by the Legislature over Gov. Linda Lingle’s veto to establish permanent absentee voting.
Absentee voting is a growing trend, with a third of Hawai’i voters casting ballots absentee in the 2006 general election. We may ultimately get to the point where it makes sense to do all voting by mail, which has worked well in Oregon.
But safeguards must be in place to preclude abuse, and critics are not convinced that SB 156 provides that — a concern expressed by Lingle in her veto message.
Under the measure, voters who request absentee ballots in this year’s election will automatically be mailed ballots in future elections without renewing their request. They will be removed from the rolls only if they die, move, request termination in writing or fail to vote.
The trouble is, the law provides no way for elections officials to know when people die or move. The Office of Elections and county clerks say they don’t have procedures to verify the status of absentee voters and doubt they can enact airtight safeguards on such short notice. Over time, we won’t be sure who is filling out the ballots and mailing them in.
The present requirement for new absentee ballot requests each election is working fine, and there was no urgency for the Legislature to rush forward with permanent absentee voting before the details were worked out.
Having failed to address the concerns of the governor and elections experts, lawmakers should plan a revisit next session before permanent absentee voting fully takes effect in 2010.
It’s frustrating that we keep getting stuck with these imperfect laws because Democratic legislators and the Republican Lingle don’t work out their differences in advance of passage, as was routinely done under Democratic governors.
Only one gubernatorial veto was overridden in the 40 years Democrats controlled the governor’s mansion, compared to 61 since Lingle was elected in 2002.
Tags: elections, Legislature, Linda Lingle
July 16th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
How about renewing the application once every ten years prior to the first election immediately following reapportment - the one ending in 2 such as 2012, 2022, 2032 along with requiring the State Department of Health to provide a list of people who’ve died in the previous calendar year on an annual basis at the beginning of the fiscal year in each county. That shouldn’t take more than three or four working days in each county which is plenty of time before the first registration deadline in August of each election year.
Granted, this won’t deal with the move-aways and the people who died between January 1 and June 30 of the current year, but it’s better than nothing.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Only one gubernatorial veto was overridden in the 40 years Democrats controlled the governor’s mansion, compared to 61 since Lingle was elected in 2002.
Dave that just goes to show the democrats do not want to give up their power. They will override veto’s on stupid legislation just because a republican governor vetoed it.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I think it is important to ensure that we have adequate safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy and security of our elections system. Every potential vulnerability should be scrutinized and, where necessary, counter-measures should be put in place. In my mind, the biggest vulnerabilities in Hawaii have been created by adopting an electronic voting system that is extremely difficult to monitor effectively. Even the Office of Election employees are not allowed to inspect the software being used to count the votes. The running of the elections has largely been outsourced to a private corporations and both state employees and the citizen “official observers” charged with vouching for the accuracy of the results have been relegated to bewildered bystanders, forced to trust the vendors when they offer assurances the results are accurate. So I appreciate thoughtful criticisms of the election system.
I have read the Governor’s veto message and it appears your post is essentially a re-write of her talking points without any independent research or analysis of your own. Lingle is either pandering to, or participating in, a longstanding GOP insinuation that there is widespread voter fraud. When she lost the 1998 gubernatorial race to Cayetano, she and her top political strategist, Kitty Lagareta, promoted the idea that Lingle lost due to widespread illegal voting by non-citizens.
If I recall correctly, your colleagues at the Honolulu Advertiser made a concerted effort to track down the claims, asking purveyors like Lagareta and Malia Zimmerman to provide whatever evidence they might have. (Zimmerman, you may remember, claimed “Chinatown bookies” had had advance knowledge of the election results, clear “proof”–in her mind– the election had been rigged.)
You have better access to the H-A archives than I do, but I believe they found one immigrant who had voted illegally.
The national GOP has encouraged rumors of massive voter fraud as a justification for opposing “motor voter” registration and other means of encouraging expanded voter participation from lower income and minority communities. Although the local GOP has engaged in irresponsible rumormongering about “voter fraud,” they have not yet adopted the voter suppression tactics often used by their mainland counterparts. Tactics directed almost exclusively towards African-American and Latino voters.
Now Lingle, and you, are opposing this bill which will make absentee voting easier. Repeating her talking points, you claim it will no longer be possible to know who is casting the ballots. Perhaps you are unaware mail-in absentee ballots are signed by the voter and the signatures verified against official records of the signatures? If this signature check were not performed, your claim the safeguards are “absent,” might have some merit. I would suggest this safeguard is probably adequate, combined with a purge of non-voters from the voter rolls. An additional safeguard, which I believe is available to the political parties, and perhaps the media, is the ability to review the voting records for the names of voters who voted absentee. Your claim that safeguards are “absent”, or even insufficient, would be more convincing if you had demonstrated how these existing steps are inadequate.
In short, I suggest your commentary would have been more useful to your readers had you done some basic fact-checking instead of just accepting Lingle’s arguments.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
You got it right Kolea- I’ve worked checking signatures on the envelope against the ones on file for years. Geez- you’d think the governor would know that. Oh maybe she did and is just trying to mislead Advetiser columnists. See I can tell a zebara’s `okole when I see it too Dave.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
MY SUGGESTION TO ALL YOU NEO-CONS: VOTE EARLY AND VOTE OFTEN.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Kolea,
I made no accusations of election fraud. As I said, I support expanded absentee voting — I’ve done it myself for 20 years. I just don’t get the rush to pass the bill over a veto this year without fully addressing the concerns about procedures raised by the county clerks. Absentee voting has grown exponentially without permanent absentee voter status and I see no harm in taking a little more time to make sure the details are right.
Dave
July 17th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Dave,
We can probably agree this law is not likely to greatly increase the rate of voting participation. I think it is reasonable to believe it will provide a more convenient service to Hawaii residents, and it is nice on those rare occasions when a government agency can make life a bit more convenient for taxpayers.
The question appears to be, are we unwittingly creating an opportunity for election fraud as we provide this modest increase in convenience? As someone who has worked long and hard on these issues, I don’t think so, though you may have evidence on hand to convince me.
I did not attend any hearings on this bill, but an online review of the record reveals there was testimony in favor of the bill from the League of Women Voters and two individuals. Comments were made by the Office of Elections and the office of the Kauai County Clerk. From the committee report, it seems the OoE comments were basically a statement they would appreciate a bit more funding if they are being asked to do more work. That is their traditional lament on these sort of things.
I believe the current signature verification process, combined with a purge of voters from the program who fail to use it, provides an adequate safeguard against fraud. IF you disagree, it would be reat if you would explain how these safeguards might be strengthened.
I am not suggesting mail-in absentee voting does not provide any opportunity for fraud. I believe there was a case last election when a husband cast a vote for his recently deceased wife, claiming that she felt so strongly about the election that the mere circumstance of her physical death shouldn’t prevent her opinion from being expressed. But, in my opinion, the safeguards are adequate to prevent significant fraud.
I believe it is much more important to pay attention to the larger problem with Hawaii’s voting system: the lack of adequate safeguards with the electronic voting system, where possible fraud might leave little or no physical evidence (unlike absentee mail-in fraud) and the potential exists for large-scale, significant fraud and unobservable fraud. The requirement that Hawaii’s voting machines create a paper record has created an audit mechanism, physical evidence which can be checked to ensure the accuracy of the vote, but only if a meaningful audit is conducted.
The Office of Elections opposed the passage of the paper trail audit mechanism and has not implemented meaningful audit requirements. One of the greatest windows of opportunity for significant voter fraud in the current system is with walk-in absentee voting on the electronic voting systems. Those votes create a paper record, but the electronic results are presently NOT checked against the paper records to ensure no fraud (or “bug”) has altered the results.
The opportunity, and motive, for voter fraud does exist, and you are right to call attention to it. But the safeguards for mail-in absentee are much stronger, and the potential for significant fraud much weaker, than at other points in the system.
I have not even touched on the ongoing effort by the Office of Elections to award a sweetheart contract to a less experienced voting services contract vendor (Hart InterCivic) who is charging almost THREE TIMES AS MUCH as the more experienced competitor, ES&S. (To her credit, the Lingle Administration has opposed the award of the contract.)
July 17th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
How about this: Anyone requesting an absentee ballot gets the option to select a one-time only ballot (reverting back to going to the polling place for the next election) or a ‘permanent’ absentee status (perhaps we should change the designation from ‘absentee’ to ‘mail-in.’)
Anyone who selects ‘permanent’ status automatically gets mailed a renewal card before every election, in lieu of the yellow card we currently get. The card would be signed and returned to ensure a mail-in ballot for the upcoming election(s), and any address changes could also be added. Anyone who doesn’t return the card by a certain date automatically gets reverted to walk-in status (and could re-apply for absentee ballots any time in the future).
This would still be a big improvement over what we have now for those who prefer to vote by mail for all elections, while addressing some concerns.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Kolea,
Something along the lines of what zzzzzz proposed would satisfy my concerns.
I’m not up to speed on the issues you raised about electronic voting and the Hart contract, but obviously you’ve given it a lot of thought and it sounds worth looking into.
Dave