I’ve already spent some time joyfully fisking the Seattle Times’ “absurd” proposal to change the deadline on mail-in ballots from the current postmarked on election day, to the more restrictive received by election day, so there’s no need to do a line-by-line takedown of Joel Connelly’s own contribution to this peculiar genre of conventional wisdom, except to correct one very glaring misstatement of fact:
Every other state mandates that ballots be in the hands of election officials when polls close on election night.
Ten seconds of googling shows that this simply is not true. State imposed deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots are all over the place, ranging from Pennsylvania’s restrictive requirement that absentee ballots be received by 5PM the Friday before the election, to the more permissive postmarked on election day rules in Alaska, District of Columbia, Maryland, Washington and West Virginia. Yes, Oregon is the only other state with all mail-in voting, and it requires ballots be received by election day… but that’s not much of a statistical sample, now is it?
That factual error aside, Joel’s main argument for moving the ballot deadline is a large, stinky red herring, for the only thing sillier than his fantasy of Washington playing the decisive electoral role in a tight, 2012 contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney (if it’s that close in WA, the electoral college outcome would be a foregone conclusion long before election day), is his suggestion that our ballot deadline could conceivably contribute to a constitutional crisis.
The main problem with both Joel’s and the Times’ musings (apart from the fact that their proposal would inevitably, you know, disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters statewide), is that they insist on conflating King County Elections’ slow ballot counting performance with the mail-in ballot deadline, when in fact the two currently have very little to do with each other. As I reported on election night, KCE had about 350,000 ballots on hand as of 5PM the Friday before the election. Yet they only managed to count about 250,000 ballots as of election night, and didn’t finally get through that original 350K batch until Thursday afternoon.
So perhaps, the 485,000 ballots counted before KCE shut down for the weekend included all those received by election day. Perhaps. And this morning, nearly a week after the close of our virtual polls, KCE is only just now getting around to counting the ballots that have arrived since.
All else being equal, KCE would not be much further along in the counting process had the deadline for receiving ballots been election day. And with the vast majority of ballots arriving by the Friday following the election (it only takes a day or two to send mail within the county) moving the deadline could only speed up results by a few days, even with a dramatically expedited counting process.
As for the excruciatingly close contest that Joel imagines, it’s the provisional ballots, missing and mismatched signatures, counts, recounts and various canvassing board and court challenges that drags out the process for weeks. Had the ballot deadline been moved prior to the 2004 gubernatorial election, it would have ultimately done little if anything to expedite the certification process.
Mail-in ballots currently must be received by the certification date — 15 days after a primary or special election, 21 days after a general — but in practice, only a handful of out-of-state and overseas ballots, mostly from overseas military personnel, trickle in during the final weeks of the canvass. I suppose an argument could be made for moving up the ballot deadline to say, the Monday following the election (as in West Virginia), but that would not officially certify results any quicker.
Resources permitting, we could count the bulk of the ballots a couple days sooner, but the thousands of provisional and signature-challenged ballots set aside for special handling will take just as long to process, with or without the added burden of handling a trickle of late mail-ins. And anything along the lines of what Joel fears — a presidential race in hand-recount territory — simply cannot be avoided or expedited; in the end, there’s only one canvassing board, and it can only consider one disputed ballot at a time.
So Joel’s proposed “fix” would do nothing to ward off the paranoid fantasy he imagines.
It would, however, make it more difficult to vote, while dramatically truncating election campaigns well in advance of election day. And that makes for a proposal I simply cannot support.
If the fishwrapper’s idea is adopted, I guarantee the post office will be flooded with job applications from young GOP activists, and after these people are hired they’ll sit on bags full of mail from Democratic-leaning precincts until after the deadline.
And maybe that’s why the fishwrapper editorial board likes the idea. Knowing GOPers can’t win elections honestly, they’re opting for the Tim Griffin solution.
His Corpulence just needs to retire.
Roger @1,
I know you’re being somewhat intentionally cynical, but in fact, I intend to address this issue in a separate post, as moving from a hard and fast postmark standard to a received by deadline does make it easier for a elections department to procedurely futz with turnout, should it be so inclined.
Let’s say the deadline is 8PM Tuesday, as it is in Oregon, and a load of mail arrives around 8PM. Does “received by” mean when the truck pulls into the driveway? When it pulls up to the loading dock? When the mail is offloaded? When the ballots are logged into the system? And who’s to say for sure the ballots arrived at 7:58 vs. 8:02, or vice versa?
On the other hand, apart from the occasional legibility issue, there’s no ambiguity about a postmark.
Joel’s imaginative scenario of the 2012 presidential election outcome hinging on a 133-vote Obama margin in Washington is an obvious reference to the outcome of the 2004 governor’s race.
In which respect, Joel doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
After the hand recount, Gregoire led by 8 votes. Weeks later, the King County canvassing board added 121 net votes to her total, for a 129-vote lead. The 133-vote final tally didn’t come about until after the election contest trial months later.
Good point. Close races require recounts.
Doesn’t matter when the ballots arrive, we’ll still be waiting.
The early results argument is make believe.
Makes me wonder who profits from this proposed change.
If we MUST use mail-in ballots, then we might as well keep the “postmarked by” requirement. It adds a level of certainty to whether or not your vote will be counted, at least eventually.
The “dropped off” date is a lot more certain than the “delivered by” date. Sure, if I mail it on Friday, it will PROBABLY get there by Tuesday. And if I mail it on Saturday, the odds are better than even it will get there by Tuesday. But what if it’s mailed on Monday???? Maybe, maybe not.
I agree that the Times proposal is a solution in search of a problem.
The editorial boards don’t come up with these bad ideas all by themselves. Reed’s PR machine is sophisticated.
Naomi Klein, David Domke, and others have taught us how it works.
These guys have an agenda. They wait for (or fabricate) a crisis. Then they ram through their “reforms”.
Goldy, you are more anxious for attention than a two-year-old.
If anything I would go one step further than Goldy.
NO vote should be accepted unless it is postmarked no more than two days before Election Day and no later than midnoght on ED.
This would have another effect … it would limit the ability of churches and unions, not to mention drinking clubs, to organize voting parties to collect ballots a week or more BEFORE the campaign debate is ended.
I would also push for making ED (an interesting acronym used here?) an official holiday. Why not have a day of to vite or make it on Sunday?
Fianlly, there ought to be a LOT more places to drop off ballots. Why make folks pay for a stamp when all we need is for every police station or shopping mall to have secure drop off boxes that close at midnight? For that matter, I ‘spect that starbucks and McD’s would love to exchange a freebie for a (sealed) ballot! Imagine the analysts trying to figger out whether a Mocha Latte gets more ballots than a big Mac? …
As for the haste to KNOW the result ….in other countries where govt changes by coup this IS important, here waiting a day or two seems harmless. Hell I suspect Fox would relish something to fill the 24/7 maw with … imagine …
With all due respect Mr. Connely, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
re 10: How much respect is due Mr. Connelly? (No offense.)
@8 So says the guy with his face adorning a bus.
Joel @8 doing the fourth estate proud once again.
Joel@8
So no answer to Goldy’s very real charges of ridiculousness to your solution to a made up problem?
You’re just making yourself look petty.
Joel @8,
Hmm. Perhaps. But I don’t see how that has anything to do with this particular post, which is well reasoned, well supported, and not particularly hyperbolic.
I think I’ve made a strong case that Washington is not the only state with an election day postmark deadline, that KCE’s delay in reporting results from the current election is not thus far due to our ballot deadline, and that changing our deadline so that ballots must be received by election day would not do much to avoid or ameliorate the unlikely nightmare you imagine.
I just don’t think that you or the Times have made a strong argument for changing the deadline.
I’d rather the count be accurate and take two weeks long than the count be innacurate and done on election night.
Just to beat the obviously rigored horse…
Lets say I drop my ballot ballot on Saturday morning before election day Tuesday at my lovely suburban post office. Picked up and sorted on Saturday, all day Monday and Tuesday to make it about 20 miles to the clerks office.
But Saturday night the storm of 2009 hits. No trucks on the road til Thursday. My vote doesn’t count.
Not to mention, uniformity of election proceedures is the ultimate goal (See Florida 2000). The resident of rual Snoqualmie might need to post a ballot at least a day earlier than the resident of Issaquah even though they are only 10 miles or so away from one another. 1 election, 1 county, 2 different standards.
Amazing that anyone that has the posisition of “op/ed” columnist would even get within a firing synapse of this conclusion…
Every Post collection box has a pickup time schedule posted. Anything in the box by the time it is picked up on that day is postmarked for that day.
Coding on the ID code sprayed on the back of mailpiece will tell the exact time the piece was cancelled, but that is legally irrelevant. If it is mailed in any box before the close of business that day (usually later than that, really) it is postmarked that day.
Time of arrival on the dock is irrelevant. That day is that day.On tax days usually one or more branches remain open until midnight so people can avoid IRS penalties.
X’ad @18,
Right, that’s what I’m saying. A postmark is hard and fast, and the voter has some assurance that if a ballot is dropped off before closing, it will be postmarked that day.
My point in the comment you reference is that we don’t have those same assurances on the receiving end at an elections department. A load of mail gets dumped off around 8PM, and that may or may not be logged as having arrived by 8PM, regardless of whether it really arrived a little before or a little after the deadline.
Right. The postmark is a legal issue and is standardized by Federal Law and that’s the end of it. Actually the postmark is executed at a central facility, and anything rec’d that day is expedited and there is a federal statute against delaying the mail. USPS is quite diligent in seeing that does not happen internally.
Conviction results in termination and imprisonment.
It took me a while, but I finally realized that King Frank Blethen hates the vote-counting delays because television and radio cover it so perfectly. A daily release of ballots in the late afternoon is custom-made for the late afternoon news block, who is geared up to report the totals as they happen. By the next morning, its old news, and that is what has Frank in such a dither. But if he owned a TV station (heaven forfend), he would be croaking a different tune. Of course, he would still be as corpulent as ever.
As I read the Times editorial I was asking myself, “Where is the problem?”
If indeed the times and Connelly really want up to date election day results the they need to call for a return to the old manual voting machines. Election results were had that evening.
So far, this had been a tempest in a teapot, until I just read somewhere else that now Christine Gregoire feels the same way: “It’s taking too long to get election results,” she whines.
Something is going on here. The bottom line is this: the mail-in system is inherently flawed in many ways, including the fact that voting is now dragged out over several weeks. But other voters are waiting until the last minute because they want time to hear all the facts before they decide. So whose vote should be more important? Right now, the early returns had MCGinn leading, so, on election night, his volunteers started calling voters whose ballots were still not in and asking for their vote… then offering to drive the ballots to the nearest drop box. Illegal? No. Questionable? Maybe.
What all this shows me is that nobody likes this all mail-in system, it’s not working out to anybody’s satisfaction. Why don’t we scrap this craparola and go back to a more reliable voting system?
Lefty @ 24
The election equipment vendors love vote by mail. Now that the “market” for touchscreen voting machines has dried up, it’s their opportunity to sell us a new round of garbage. Even more expensive then the last round. There’s a nationwide push. By well funded lobbyists, of course.
Has Connelly given any consideration to the fact that requiring ballots to be received by election day would very likely disenfranchise members of the military overseas who would somehow have to ensure that their ballots make it from a war zone to their local county auditor’s office?
Joel, are you really suggesting that we make it harder for the men and women who put their lives on the line for our freedom to exercise their right to vote?
I think the politicians (and news media)miss the election-eve parties, all the suspense, hundreds of volunteers and staffers exploding into applause when their candidate takes the state to announce that their opponant has just called them to concede….
It’s just not the same anymore. But for the rest of us who never attend those parties, what’s the big deal?
The reference (a few posts back) about a big storm affecting mail delivery has some element of truth to it. We seldom get snow in early November, but a big windstorm knocking out power across the region, and even shutting down many roads due to fallen trees and debris, could delay delivery of ballots for a few days.
During the snowstorm last year, I stopped off at my local post office to drop off some mail. The mailman wasn’t able to get to my mailbox for a week, snowplows hadn’t kept the road clear but had managed to create a five-foot embankment seperating my street’s mailboxes from the road. If you could get to it, you had to kneel down on your knees to open the box, only to find it empty).
Anyway, there was a long line at the post office, and I got to hear the clerks and the supervisor bantering amoung themselves as they tried to handle the flow of customers. One lady wanted to know if she chose express mail if her package would really be delivered the next day, the supervisor said he couldn’t guarantee anything, given the conditions. Anther clerk yelled that yet another worker called to say they couldn’t make it into work, their road hadn’t been plowed and it was three feet deep. Someone from another post office called to ask if anyone at this post office could get into their personal car and pick up mail and deliver it to a distribution center because all of the official vehicles were stuck out on the roads, and wouldn’t be back for ours.
So, as unlikely as a major weather storm might be to disrupt mail delivery on the day or two prior to an election, I think it is far more likely that such a problem would dis-enfranchise voters than that there would be an event where Washington State decided a U.S. presidential election. If it’s that close by election eve, and that much is at stake, there’s going to be a recount anyway.
@28
I believe a flood out in Snoqualmie actually interfered with getting ballots into King County elections in the past couple of years. I don’t remember the year but I do remember hearing about it on the news.
seems like most epople would go for speeding up the counting, so if the Times’ intent is quicker resolution, why not do that? People should be working 24 hours to get the ballots counted, duh.
So…the weather is so bad the mailman can’t make it out on the road but you’re going to drive to the polling place.
Right.
fairness @ 30
Have you worked an election? If you had, you’d know your suggestion of working 24 hours is pretty silly.
Be Quick, But Don’t Hurry. — John Wooden