OREGON WAS one of the first states to adopt the secret ballot. Next month, if Phil Kiesling has his way, it may become the first state to abolish it.
Keisling is Oregon's secretary of state and an ardent proponent of conducting elections by mail. Oregonians have been experimenting with postal voting since the early 1980s, mostly for local and special elections. But if Ballot Measure 60 is approved on Nov. 3, all Oregon elections will henceforth be conducted by mail. Ballot boxes and polling places will become things of the past.
 If some Oregonians can't bestir themselves to get to a ballot box once every two years, why should the ballot box should be brought to them? |
So, for that matter, will Election Day. Statewide campaigns will no longer end with an exclamation point as voters publicly come together on a single climactic day to choose their representatives. Instead they will fizzle out in an ellipsis. Voters will get ballots in the mail weeks in advance and will send them back whenever they feel like it. It will be, one critic of Measure 60 puts it, rather like having a judge announce that any juror may vote and go home when he decides he's seen and heard enough of the evidence.
The great advantage of vote-by-mail, proclaim its advocates, is its convenience — and as elections are made more convenient, voter participation will rise. "We all know," says Kiesling, "that the competing time constraints between work and family make it difficult to find time to vote. . . . Vote-by-mail is an effective solution for voters facing busy lives and longer ballots."
The director of the Oregon Public Interest Research Group, a liberal activist organization, agrees. "With vote-by-mail," writes Maureen Kirk, "citizens will be able to vote without the barriers of work schedules, child care, transportation, and other time or lifestyle constraints." In the official voter guide distributed statewide, James Sager of the Oregon Education Association ticks off the problems Measure 60 would eliminate: "No more juggling your schedule. No worries about the weather. No questions about polling location. No hassle."
Measure 60's opponents haven't been silent. They point out that mail-only voting will make electoral fraud more likely. That it encourages premature and impulse voting. That some ballots are bound to get stolen or lost in the mail. That others will be sent to voters who have died or moved — or who have no interest in voting. That mass-mailing ballots as if they were supermarket circulars can only trivialize elections. That it would do away with the integrity of the secret voting booth, a reform Oregon adopted a century ago. And that it eliminates one of the few remaining civic ceremonies by which Americans reaffirm their democracy — gathering at the polls on the first Tuesday of every other November.
But if opinion surveys are right, voters aren't listening. Measure 60 is widely supported. With their appeal to self-interest — the convenience of voting at home — and public interest - the promise of higher voter turnout — Kiesling & Co. have hit on a seemingly unbeatable pitch.
Which is a shame.
No question about it, mail-in elections make voting so easy that even uninterested slackers might be induced to cast a ballot. But why is that a good thing? Why should citizens who take voting seriously want their franchise diluted by the votes of citizens who don't take voting seriously?
It is one thing to say that democracy should not be encumbered by poll taxes, property requirements, or discrimination on the basis of gender. It is something else entirely to say that if people can't bestir themselves to get to a ballot box once every two years, the ballot box should be brought to them.
After all, voting is not a Herculean challenge. You go to the polling place, you wait in line, you step behind the curtain, you mark your choices. Someone for whom that is too much to bother with is someone who shouldn't be voting in the first place.
"When they have to get the kids to bed, struggle with bad weather, and do their hour commute to work," Richard Hanson, Oregon's assistant secretary of state, has said, "the last thing they are going to want to do is go to the polls." The reason for low voter turnout is "not that people are out of touch; it's that the system is not meeting their needs."
Nonsense. Low voter turnout is caused by ignorance, apathy, and selfishness and by a disdain for politics and politicians. Voters who find it logistically difficult to get to the polls — because of illness, age, or a punishing schedule — have the easy option of requesting an absentee ballot. With a few exceptions, Americans who don't vote don't want to vote. Fine. It's a free country. The rest of us ought to be grateful that public policy isn't being made by people who treat their voting rights with such disrespect.
Oregon was a pioneer in the empowerment of voters. It was in the forefront of the movement for women's suffrage, for electing US senators by popular vote, and for enabling citizens to enact and repeal laws by initiative and referendum. Measure 60 will degrade that record. Dumbing down elections does not make them more meaningful. Turning ballots into junk mail does not make citizens take them more seriously. If Oregonians pass Measure 60, they will have succeeded only in making their own votes worth less.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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