NEWS: Picking The President By Mail

This was an interesting article about fraud allegations, fair voting and the benefits of voting by mail (yes, snail mail).

Picking The President By Mail
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/16/opinion/main656039.shtml
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1. Was This Election Stolen?
The Internet is alive with furious messages from my frustrated friends, fanning the flames of Florida 2000. Along with many others, Thom Hartmann, a columnist and radio host writing on the respected site CommonDreams.org, has zeroed in on the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final results. How, he demands to know, could the leaks that so strongly favored John Kerry early in the evening have been so far wrong?
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2. Was The Election Fair?
The vote in Ohio raised another issue, yet more serious for the future. Was the election conducted fairly? And, in particular, what effect did new machine technologies, used in many parts of the state, have on the vote? That forces us to consider the votes that were not cast.
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3. Vote By Mail: The Time Has Come
The remedy is voting by mail, the system now in place in the state of Oregon. In Oregon, there are no election day problems, because there is no election day. Instead, ballots are mailed to voters at their registered address, filled out and returned, with a signature verification. Participation rates are high -- 63 percent of the voting age population this year, against a national average of 53 percent. Fraud is virtually nil. And as the ballots are paper (they are read by a scanning machine), there is a verifiable paper trail.
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Read Entire Article

we vote by mail and it is a far superior system to the mess we have in the rest of the country. There is a signature on file, the signature on the back of the envelope (required) is compared and if it appears not to be right...the individual is called in to either redo the signature card...or else tell them it is a forgery.
Then the ballots are removed from the envelope. A democrat and a republican work together and if the ballot is not marked correctly ink rather than #2 pencil they fix it. If the ballot is messed up...coffee, jam, something...the Dem and the repub make a new ballot.
They make every attempt to make the ballots useable. they only thing they don't do anything about if the person voted for two persons.
The ballots are read by scanner but a test of this system is observed by both chairs of the parties or their surrogates.

it just depends on the county.

however the right side would probably find some way to fix it to their advantage.:evilgrin:

n/t

We do have GOTV drives, huge drives. We have 2 weeks to know who voted and who didn't and continue to target the nonvoters. Also, there's exit polling. They can do it either by phone or by standing at drop boxes, it's not only mail because people do need to be able to vote for free. About 50% of the voting took place in the last two days, standing by busy drop boxes in select counties would give an idea of which way the vote was going. And I don't think it would end advertising in a close state either, considering 50% vote on the last 2 days. Only one thing, I suppose we should outlaw ballot picker uppers. It's sad because it's helpful, but there is an opportunity for dumping ballots there.

Otherwise, it's absolutely terrific and we should do this nationally. That and make it a law that in Presidential elections you only vote for the President. Take out all those wedge issues.