{"id":14657,"date":"2017-01-27T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/article\/peace-justice-national-vote-by-mail-could-add-millions-of-votes-in-2018-20170127\/"},"modified":"2020-02-06T09:15:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T17:15:50","slug":"national-vote-by-mail-could-add-millions-of-votes-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/social-justice\/2017\/01\/27\/national-vote-by-mail-could-add-millions-of-votes-in-2018","title":{"rendered":"National \u201cVote by Mail\u201d Could Add Millions of Votes in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
For many Americans, participating in November\u2019s election was a simple matter of showing up at their polling places, waiting a few minutes, and casting their votes. For others, it required patience, proper identification, and even courage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve learned in literally 20 years of voting by mail in Oregon is this works.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In Kansas City, Missouri, some voters waited for more than three hours to cast their ballots. In Durham, North Carolina, long lines and malfunctioning voting machines forced officials to extend polling place hours. In Austin, Texas, poll workers reportedly told voters they could not vote without IDs\u2014despite a July ruling by a federal appeals court judge allowing voters without photo IDs to cast ballots.<\/p>\n
None of these obstacles affected me or my neighbors in Seattle. I voted two weeks before Election Day from my kitchen table, with a cup of coffee in hand and my laptop at the ready to research the many down-ballot candidates and initiatives. When I finished filling in the bubbles, I sealed my ballot in an envelope and dropped it in a collection box at the library. I was able to vote from home because Washington is one of three states, along with Oregon and Colorado, that uses vote by mail for every election.<\/p>\n
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wants to extend that policy to the whole country. The Oregon Democrat\u2019s National Vote By Mail Act <\/a> would require states to mail every voter their ballot at least two weeks before the election, and then collect them via prepaid envelopes or official drop boxes. It would also create an automatic voter registration system through the Department of Motor Vehicles.<\/p>\n
Though the impact of vote by mail is mostly about convenience in the blue states where it\u2019s currently used, the effects could be transformative in states like North Carolina and Wisconsin, where voter suppression laws have proliferated since Shelby County v. Holder, when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act. If passed, Wyden\u2019s law could bring millions of disenfranchised people\u2014mostly people of color and poor people\u2014back into the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a proven track record.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve learned in literally 20 years of voting by mail in Oregon is this works,\u201d Wyden says. \u201cIt empowers voters. They like the fact that they have a little more time to consider their choices. They don\u2019t have to take a day off to go vote. It\u2019s less expensive than the alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wyden first introduced the bill in July, but it never made it out of committee. He intends to reintroduce the bill this year. The Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to pass it, but Wyden sees value in keeping the conversation alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, some people might want to look at this through a party filter,\u201d he says. \u201c[But] citizens have been saying that we want approaches in government where there\u2019s a proven track record. This is one where we can stand up and say we\u2019ve got a proven track record.\u201d<\/p>\n
A cure for voter suppression?<\/h4>\n
According the Brennan Center for Justice, a research and advocacy nonprofit, 21 states have enacted more restrictive voting laws in recent years, while eight have reduced early-voting opportunities. The laws disproportionately affect people of color and low-income people, sometimes intentionally so. In a decision striking down North Carolina voter ID requirements, a federal appeals court judge wrote<\/a> that \u201cthe new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allegra Chapman, director of voting and elections at the nonprofit Common Cause, says voter restrictions had a measurable impact in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust look at Wisconsin,\u201d Chapman says. \u201cIt had a strict photo ID law for the first time. \u2026 Three hundred thousand Wisconsin voters did not have the ID or access to the ID they needed to vote.\u201d Donald Trump won that state by fewer than 30,000 votes.<\/p>\n
ID laws aren\u2019t the only form of voter suppression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, ID laws aren\u2019t the only form of voter suppression. Many people can\u2019t afford to spend hours in line and away from work on a Tuesday, and long lines disproportionately affect people of color. The Brennan Center found that Hispanic voters were six times more likely than Whites to report waiting more than 30 minutes to vote, while African Americans were four times more likely.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will obviously help address those issues because there will no longer be long lines at polling stations if folks receive their ballot at home,\u201d says Eric Richardson, president of the Eugene, Oregon, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which supports Wyden\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n
Wyden\u2019s spokesman Keith Chu says the bill doesn\u2019t directly address voter ID laws. But it does include language specifying that \u201cIf an individual in a State is eligible to cast a vote in an election for Federal office, the State may not impose any additional conditions or requirements on the eligibility of the individual to cast the vote in such election by mail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman doesn\u2019t see vote by mail as panacea for America\u2019s increasingly restrictive voting laws, but supports Wyden\u2019s bill as a piece of the solution.<\/p>\n
For most people it is easier to fill out a ballot from home and drop it in the mail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cVote by mail is the sort of thing we think should be put in place alongside a host of other reforms,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen there\u2019s a big package deal that meets voters where they are, that\u2019s where you\u2019re going to see voter turnout improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman points to the bipartisan package <\/a> the Colorado Legislature passed in 2013. In addition to establishing vote by mail, it allowed voters to register on Election Day and created voter centers at which people can register, update their information, drop off their ballots, or vote in person. She also points to the success of automatic voter registration in Oregon, where anyone who had business with the Department of Motor Vehicles last year was automatically registered to vote<\/a>. According to The New York Times, 225,000 Oregonians were newly registered through the DMV in 2016, and 43 percent of those new voters cast ballots in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cA small but measurable impact\u201d<\/h4>\n
Oregon was the first state to move to all-mail voting in 2000, with Washington and Colorado following behind. Some California counties will move to all-mail voting in 2018. Nebraska legislators are considering vote by mail as well.<\/p>\n
According to former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, the switch to vote by mail in the general election had a small but measurable impact on turnout. \u201cOregon already had a pretty high voter turnout,\u201d he says. \u201cFrom our analysis \u2026 enacting vote by mail increased voter turnout by about 2 percent.\u201d That would be about 30,000 additional voters each year, on average.<\/p>\n
Supporters of vote by mail attribute that boost in part to convenience. Certainly for most people it is easier to fill out a ballot from home and drop it in the mail instead of going to a polling place on a weekday.<\/p>\n
At a glance, vote-by-mail states certainly seem to turn out more people than most. According to voting statistics expert Dr. Michael McDonald\u2019s United States Election Project<\/a>, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington each had 2016 turnouts well above the national average of 60 percent.<\/p>\n
Supporters say that vote by mail also saves money.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But critics dispute the link between those high numbers and vote by mail. \u201cIn high-profile elections \u2026 people who are going to vote are going to vote,\u201d says Steve Huefner, a law professor at Ohio State University. \u201cAnd they\u2019ll do that whether it\u2019s voting by mail from their kitchen table or going to the polling place on the designated Election Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He points to studies showing that the switch to vote by mail has a low impact on presidential elections while delivering \u201csome marginal increase in turnout in off-year elections or smaller local elections.\u201d<\/p>\n