Re: Absentee voters

["R. Mercuri" <notable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.