Vote by mail conceals who actually voted and hides chain of custody. It is a way of transferring power from the many to the few, a centralization and consolidation of power. And claims cited by its supporters are untrue; it does not increase turnout. Don't fall for the absentee voting craze.

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Vote-by-mail is the second highest risk method of voting. It conceals three of the four crucial processes. (Internet voting, illegal in most states, is the highest risk form of voting because it conceals all four essential election processes from the public.)

A true democracy is differentiated from a false democracy by public elections. The key word is PUBLIC. Saddam Hussein had elections. The Soviet Union had elections. But those elections were not public, and were controlled by government insiders. A public election means that public can see and authenticate essential processes.

THE FOUR CRUCIAL PROCESSES ARE:
1) Who can vote (the voter list)
2) Who did vote (the pollbook, or participating voter list)
3) Whether votes counted were the votes cast (chain of custody)
4) Whether counting was accurate (public can see and authenticate counting)

Vote by mail conceals #2, #3, and usually #4 from the public. I'm going to show you the details on that below, along with documented examples of insiders exploiting absentee voting processes to alter election results, and I'll point out some of the things we can do to resolve these problems.

STATS AND VOTE-BY-MAIL LAWS

- Need-only absentee voting caps vote-by-mail risks at about 10 percent of the vote.

- When restrictions are loosened to no-fault absentee voting, vote-by-mail participation quickly climbs to about 40 percent of all votes.

- When opt-in permanent vote-by-mail is introduced (encouraging voters to choose to automatically be sent a ballot, whether they request it or not), vote-by-mail increases to about two-thirds of the vote.

- And in two states now (Washington and Oregon), forced absentee voting has been invoked, removing voters right to go to the polls at all.

- Twenty-five states have loosened up vote-by-mail controls for unrestricted absentee voting (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming). But even if your state has held the line against unrestricted vote-by-mail, a FEDERAL
BILL (Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act: H.R. 1604) has been trying force it into all states.

- In addition, nine states ditched election office copies of pen-and-ink voter signatures (Arizona, California, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Oregon, Utah, Washington). More states have proposed bills to do this, and Rhode Island is now using an etch-a-sketch type pad for sigs. Even if your state defeats such bills, there is now a FEDERAL BILL ('Voter Registration Modernization Act of 2009': HR 1719) to force Internet registrations into all status.

HOW VOTE BY MAIL CONCEALS CRUCIAL ELECTION PROCESSES

The key to truly democratic elections is public control over the process. The genius of democracy is dispersal of power. This concept is sometimes called "many eyes." Polling place voting involves community, and places many eyes on who can vote, who did vote, and chain of custody. (Computerized counting removes the many eyes for crucial process #4, counting of the vote, unless accompanied by parallel public counting methods; some of these will be discussed at the end of this article.)

Removing the "many eyes" and replacing them with just a few eyes centralizes power. It forces the public to cede over control to insiders (government workers or vendors). Centralization of power produces a threat to the viability of a democratic system. Centralization of power is tidier than the "many eyes" process, but it is also unstable. When power is centralized, a democratic system can be toppled by a small handful of unethical individuals.

VOTE BY MAIL TRANSFERS CONTROL - With polling place voting, public citizens (poll workers) and observers monitor ballots and who votes. Unrestricted vote-by-mail transfers control to insiders, specifically, the IT guy, the database guy, the print shop guy, a mailing house person. Most absentee vote fraud convictions are perpetrated by persons with inside access.

Here are some examples of absentee voting fraud perpetrated by elections office insiders:

3 archived articles on absentee fraud by insiders in Essex County NJ:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/158/69545.html

1 archived article on absentee fraud by insiders in Atlantic County NJ:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/158/69539.html

Each of the above instances was prosecuted in New Jersey during a time when absentee voting was need-only. The checks and balances in place with need-only absentee voting enabled New Jersey officials to catch the absentee fraud. So what did New Jersey do? It loosened its restrictions, removing the very checks and balances that allowed the two situations above to be caught.

DATABASE WARS: You can't secure a computer from its own administrator. I expect to see two kinds of database wars in play for the November 2010 election: Voter list database manipulation, and vote-by-mail database tampering.

The extraordinary risks with vote-by-mail are the customized databases. Vote-by-mail databases are fluid, changeable, and control who can and cannot vote. Blocs of data can be switched by the administrator. Databases control signature files used for matching. Databases control who gets ballots and which returned ballots are accepted. Vote by mail databases are unregulated & uncertified.

The primary architect for current vote-by-mail computer software was Jeffrey Dean, an embezzler who specialized in computer crime. Dean's Dept. of Corrections papers:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/dean/dean-criminal-docs.pdf
Court transcripts showing Dean's key role in vote-by-mail software:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/17789.html

* For more on the two convicted felons known to have been involved in US vote-by-mail systems, see bottom of this article.

But even if convicted felons were not involved, vote by mail still transfers power to whatever IT person is involved in manipulating the data used to select and authenticate absentee voters. Vote by mail still conceals who actually voted, and whether the votes counted are the real ones.

PRINTING OPERATIONS: Printing operations control how many ballots and envelopes are printed, and often do the mail processing and mailing as well. The number of ballots and envelopes created at the print shop is not reviewable by public citizens or political parties, because the print shop is a private business, not subject to public records requests.

Printing operations with an exceptional level of access and, ultimately, control, over ballot printing, vote-counting machines, and/or mailing include Runbeck (Arizona and Florida), and Harp Enterprises, which has assumed near-total middleman control over Kentucky.

CHECKS AND BALANCES ARE A MAGIC SHOW

"Don't look there, look here!" When we ask about vote by mail checks and balances, our eyes are directed to what happens to signatures that don't match, a small number. But our eyes need to be on the signatures that DO match.

Large vote by mail systems compare electronic
signature databases. Human eyes never see the pen and ink. Electronic databases can be adjusted to compare signatures to themselves, or to bypass signature comparisons altogether.

A DOG VOTED IN WASHINGTON In Washington, a dog named Duncan was registered to vote using a paw-print for a signature, and he made it through two elections without the signature verification catching it. (The owner of the dog finally reported this).
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/285/47585.html

LAKE COUNTY INDIANA REACTIVATED REJECTED ABSENTEE BALLOTS

In Lake County Indiana, after the election but before certification, a number of rejected absentee ballots were somehow re-validated. A private contractor admitted to doing this by remoting into the Lake County database. The firm said it was "testing something." Archived article:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/142/77813.html

OREGON STATISTICS DON'T MAKE SENSE

We hear that Oregon has a stellar vote-by-mail system and high turnout. But nationwide turnout statistics collected by the U.S. Election Assistence Commission (EAC) don't support this. In 2006, Oregon's turnout was squarely in the middle of the pack. Here's the data:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/EAC2006stats.xls.

Out of 2.5 million ballots mailed in the 2006 general election, Oregon reported to the EAC that ZERO ballots returned undeliverable, and Oregon reports that out of 2.5 million ballots, only 54 came in after the deadline.

VOTE BY MAIL DOES NOT IMPROVE TURNOUT

In Washington State when forced vote-by-mail was introduced, turnout dropped.

SHOULD YOU VOTE BY MAIL?

You should vote. If you are forced to vote by mail (Washington, Oregon), just do it. Deciding not to vote is voluntary disenfranchisement; if you might be disenfranchised, at least make it involuntary and then kick and scream about it.

If you are not forced to vote by mail, don't. Vote at the polling place. Allow plenty of time. Assert your right to vote and if you are registered to vote but are told you cannot, assert your right to a provisional ballot and report the problem. Give yourself enough time to wait in line if needed. Voting at the polling place on Election Day has more checks and balances than voting early, so choose the old fashioned route.

MEANINGFUL ACTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS FOR VOTE BY MAIL

I have not yet seen public controls to help with the problem areas of concealing who did vote and chain of custody. As for the fourth essential step, the counting of the vote, here are three good approaches:

1) The New Hampshire Protect the Count project - working on parallel public counting of the votes in all locations with voting machines. Also, New Hampshire does need-only absentee voting and the post office delivers absentee ballots to the polling place for hand counting on Election Night, which lowers risk for vote by mail.

2) The Mitch Trachtenberg system, a public, FREE, open source software which utilizes a publicly purchased non-proprietary document scanner to capture images of every ballot (the ballots are anonymous and cannot be connected to the voter); the public can then examine every ballot and/or run them through the open source software.

3) The Whatcom County method: Citizens can watch as batches of absentee ballots are scanned, and can call out any batch for a prompt hand count authentication.

Note that all of the above methods only help with crucial process #4, authentication of the count, and they do not help at all with #2 (who did vote) or #3 (chain of custody).

Authors Website: http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Authors Bio:
Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.