Tuesday will bring yet another manifestation of our marvelous mail voting system. Actually, this year’s proof has been evident for two weeks as 84,274 Clark County voters have researched ballots they received by mail. As of Friday, 25,714 of those ballots had been returned. That’s a participation of about 30.5 percent so far, and County Auditor Greg Kimsey is projecting a final turnout of about 45 percent.
The more our state (and especially mail-voting pioneer Oregon) settles into this system, the weaker become the complaints of a few years back. Indeed, a 2003 survey conducted by the University of Oregon’s political science department showed 81 percent approval of postal voting, with bipartisan support from Democrats (85 percent approval) and Republicans (76 percent). I suspect approval is even higher today, nine years later.
Of course, such widespread acceptance won’t muzzle the Hounds of Whinerville whose DNA happens to be braided around a fierce and immutable resistance to change. Just a little foresight reveals the next tactic of this small but full-throated kennel: They will correctly point out that the mail-voting procedure relies upon a withering postal system that could become obsolete in two or three decades. My prediction is that, by then, online voting will have been perfected to the point of implementation, but let’s set aside what I think and look at some recent developments.
We keep hearing reports of Saturday mail delivery being eliminated. Nothing imminent, but as columnist Jeff Mapes reported in The Oregonian, 252 mail processing facilities are nearing closure around the country, including four in Oregon — in Salem, Eugene, Bend and Pendleton. This could slow delivery of ballots, especially in rural areas. But there are a few ways to solve this problem and keep voting easy. One would be earlier mailing of ballots. Another is to increase ballot drop-off sites. As Mapes wrote, this could even mean converting “some of the large mailboxes outside of closed post offices to serve as (ballot) drop boxes.”