Mail-in Voting Wins by a landslide
Goodbye to a Ritual of Democracy?
By Jonathan Weber , 11-08-07
I've always enjoyed the ritual of voting: heading down to the flag-festooned polling place, getting a nice smile from the retired folks manning the check-in table, going into the little booth to exercise by suffrage in private, feeling virtuous as I left and nodded knowingly at the other voters. Somehow going down there is a great reminder that voting is a privilege, and something to be treated with respect.
Thus I have mixed feelings in looking at the turnout for Tuesday's local elections, which in much of the state were conducted by mail for the first time. In Missoula, a 46% voter turnout - that's triple the last city council election. In Helena, the number was 61% - nothing less than incredible for an off-year local election. Presidential races barely get to those numbers in most places.
The obvious conclusion is that a lot more people vote if they can do it by mail, and it's easier for election officials too. Moving broadly to mail-in voting, as they've already done in Washington and Oregon, seems like the only reasonable course. My ritual, I fear, will soon be a thing of the past.
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It doesn't have to increase across "all demographics" in order to be a sucess. Why do you think a twenty to hundred percent turnout has to be spread equally across "all demographics"? Perhaps you've got a particular political point of view you'd hate to see threatened by increased turnout, eh?
If one segment turns out in greater numbers, are they "relatively disenfranchising" another segment, or are they exercising their voting privilege?
I'd like to simply test my theory of your post. If we found out that mail ballot's convenience was taken advantage of by wealthy white people, and increased their turnout by 100%, say from thirty five to seventy percent, but such an increase wasn't matched by poor college students, whose increase was only ten percent, would the mail ballot's increase in turnout be a bad thing?