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Vote by Mail: Where’s the Downside?

(This article first appeared in the September/October 2007 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

During the summer, I finally took some leave to spend time with family and old friends. All of us should be thankful that we have jobs with decent benefits such us vacation time.

What my fellow ex-Marines call R&R was interrupted on two occasions, one of which I could not possibly have planned for: I took time off from my time off to say goodbye to Percy Harrison, the 12-year veteran Chicago Region Clerk NBA. Percy’s passing leaves a large hole in the APWU family. Percy was a big man with a big heart who was a big blessing to all who knew or needed him. I’ll miss you, brother.

A second “summer interruption” was a conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State. Every state in our union has such a position, and the conference was hosted by the secretary of state for Oregon.

"The responsibility of processing, delivering, and returning the completed ballots would be a great source of honor and pride."

“Voting by Mail” was the main theme of the conference: Oregon is the only state in which all elections are conducted by mail-in ballots. The state’s voter-participation percentage is almost double that of the rest of the states, and voting by mail continues to become more popular. Needless to say, representatives from Oregon — and many of the speakers familiar with that state’s experience — were encouraging the other secretaries to steer their states to voting by mail.

Many states have approved voting by computer ballot, which leaves no paper trail. I believe this to be very suspect, but had accepted that my doubts were due to a generation gap — the one between me and the younger generation, which seems to do everything by keyboard.

High-Tech Suspicions

However, it turns out that the “computer generation” is even more suspicious of any system that lacks a paper trail than I am, because they know bet­ter than I know how easily computers can be manipulated.

Like most organizations, our union votes by mail: A computer counts the ballots and keeps totals for batches of ballots — which are kept in bundles — and a running total for all bundles. If the computer says Bundle ABC has a count of 126 to 174, you can go to Bundle ABC and count the ballots manually to verify the computerized results. Observers can check any and all bundles.

The computer counts fast, gives quick results, and the accuracy can be verified. What a difference this could make in our elections of public officials.

Federal, State, and Local Elections

The main problem I see with the current process is that the majority of those who vote, which is invariably a minority of those eligible to vote, are from the extreme Left or Right. Because they must make their pitch to those who are most motivated to go to the polls, politicians must play to the extremes.

Can you imagine an America where the ease of voting would result in the vast majority taking part? Politicians would have to discuss issues affecting the majority instead of appealing to the far edges.

They would have to speak to the mother holding down two jobs, and with no voting leave; to the chronically ill who cannot easily get to the polls; to the farmers who may have to save a crop from freeze or rain; and millions of others to whom going to a polling place has become a tedious detour in our hurry-up society.

With vote-by-mail, the process of voters going to polling places would be replaced by a process coordinated by the most respected government organization, the USPS, and the most trusted group of government employees: postal workers.

At the conference, I assured the secretaries of state that this is not an issue of jobs or work for the APWU. With the billions of pieces of mail we handle each year, the “voting” mail would be only a nudge to postal volume and probably would not create a single new job.

On your behalf, however, I did say that the responsibility of processing, delivering, and returning completed ballots would be considered a great source of honor and pride. I told the state officials that helping citizens participate in America’s greatest right would be a privilege.

2007 JCIM Available

The 2007 Joint Contract Interpretation Manual is now available. The JCIM update, which was agreed to in June, is intended to be a resource for the administration of the National Agreement. Jointly prepared by the APWU and the USPS, the manual provides a mutually agreed-to explanation of how to apply the contract to the issues addressed.

When a dispute arises, the parties should first go to the JCIM to determine whether the dispute is addressed there. If it is, the parties are required to resolve the dispute in accordance with this manual.

Click here to view The 2007 JCIM. The final version will go to press in September.

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