Oregon's vote-by-mail system came of age on a cold, drizzly night in January 1996. It was the night of the special election to replace the disgraced Bob Packwood in the U.S. Senate with Gordon Smith, the charismatic Republican vegetable farmer from eastern Oregon, facing Ron Wyden, the wonkish Democratic congressman from Portland. It was a classic match up of the two men who, as it turned out, would both represent Oregon in the Senate for the next decade after Smith won the state's other seat in November 1996.
This night, famously, was the first Senate election conducted entirely by mail. Oregon's vote-by-mail experiment, which started quietly in 1981 with local races, was facing its biggest test yet. It finally reached prime time.
By most measures, this was going to be Smith's night. The polls looked good and they had momentum, so his campaign blew up balloons, hired a band, and drew several hundred supporters to the ornate third-floor ballroom at the Governor Hotel in downtown Portland. The stakes were high. A Smith win could spark a national Republican trend in 1996, perhaps even portend a GOP upset of Bill Clinton in the fall. They were ready to party.
But when the votes came in, Wyden won. The Republicans were stunned and wanted to blame vote by mail for the loss. Lots of Republicans went nuts thinking it had somehow been stolen by vote by mail, said Dan Lavey, a top Smith strategist.
Nobody could quite figure out if mail voting favored one party over another but that didn't stop both major parties from trying in the months and years ahead. At one point, Democrats opposed vote by mail because they thought it favored Republicans; later Republicans were sure it favored Democrats. The uncertainty delayed full implementation of mail voting until November 1998, when, through a citizen initiative, Oregon made mail voting the only method for voting in all elections. No more voting booths, polling places, or waiting in line.
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New Rituals of Democracy
Today, it's hard to see what the fuss was all about. In late April this year, Oregon's 36 counties will mail more than two million ballots for the May 16 primary with little controversy, little expectation of fraud, and a high level of acceptance by the public. A 2003 poll by the University of Oregon showed 81 percent of Oregonians preferred mailing their ballot to going to a polling place.
Other states may struggle with multiple methods of voting, doubts about software, and uncertainty over accuracy and recounts, but Oregon has one system and only one system of casting ballots and it leaves a paper trial. Vote by mail has become a routine part of Oregon's political landscape. But it wasn't easy getting there.
Vote by mail, first of all, is nothing more than an absentee ballot sent to everyone. County elections officers mail out packets about three weeks before Election Day. Voters must return their ballot by mail or drop it off by 8 p.m. on Election Day. State officials say it saves money, increases turnout, and makes voting easier for the elderly, busy parents, or anyone who has trouble getting to the polls. Opponents, though, see increased opportunities for fraud and lament losing the ceremony of going to the neighborhood polling place.
Voting, after all, is the secular sacrament of democracy. It's a communal event shared with the neighbors in a school or maybe a church, a community center, or some other symbol of civic virtue. You stand alone in a little booth, make an entirely private, personal, and unedited statement on government. And when you're done you get a little sticker than says I voted and you get to wear it all day. It's the merit badge of democracy. Tinkering with these proceedings should never be taken lightly.
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Wary Partisans
Vote by mail sneaked up on most Oregonians, and that may be why its arrival went smoothly. In 1981, state lawmakers, with little notice, approved a test program of mail voting for local elections, with the decision left up to county elections officers. In the next few years, a few local races here and there were handled by mail, while the primary and general election every two years remained polling-place elections.
No major changes were being thrust on voters and many may not have seen the practice at first because interest is usually low in local races. Lawmakers, though, liked what they saw and, in 1987, made the vote-by-mail experiment permanent, although still for local elections only. By that year, a majority of counties were using mail ballots for their local elections.
In June 1993, Oregon held its first statewide election entirely by mail, a complicated and boring measure put on the ballot by the Legislature involving voter approval of repayment of urban renewal district bonds. It failed, but turnout was still 39 percent, certainly higher than expected considering the topic.
The system was still untested in the partisan world, but perceptions changed in a 1994 congressional race, even though it was a polling-place election. On Election Night that year, Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse of the 1st District led Republican challenger Bill Witt by 10,000 votes. But as the absentee ballots were counted in the next few days, her lead evaporated to almost nothing. In the end, Furse won but only by 301 votes, one of the closest congressional race in the country that year. The swing to the Republicans came not because people who use the mail somehow favor Republicans but because the party sent absentee ballot requests to all its voters. It was that simple.
But Democrats were wary, suspicious that that mail voting -- still a new phenomenon on the partisan stage, remember -- trended Republican. The Democrats had been whipped in the 1994 elections and were looking everywhere for blame. The 1995 Legislature, controlled by Republicans, approved a plan to extend vote by mail to all elections -- primary, general, and a new special March presidential primary. Many Democrats opposed it, among them Democratic National Chairman Donald L. Fowler, who became a prominent voice against mail voting, saying it would reduce participation among poor and less educated voters.
Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber signed the bill for the presidential primary but vetoed the measure extending mail voting to all elections, much to the disappointment of Democrat Phil Keisling, the secretary of state and the state's chief elections officer, an ardent backer of mail voting. Keisling may have been stymied but got his revenge within a few months. In the fall of 1995, Packwood resigned and Keisling, as was his legal right, got to choose the type of election used to fill the seat. And to the surprise of no one, Keisling decided to use mail voting for both the primary and special election, the nation's first such congressional race.
One of the most delightful moments in my career as secretary of state was letting Don Fowler know that the special election for that open Senate seat would be vote by mail, Keisling said. He said, How can you do that? The governor vetoed the law.' I said, Your attorneys don't understand the Oregon law. It's a special election.' He laughed and said, I guess there's no way I can talk you out if it,' and I said no.
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The Road to Statewide Mail Ballots
Turnout in the December 5, 1995, primary was a robust 58 percent. Had Keisling ordered a polling-place primary, the date would have been December 13. On that day, the state was in the throes of a ferocious storm that brought 90-mile-an-hour winds, downed trees, and brought power outages to the populous Willamette Valley, including Portland. The storm would have severely disrupted a polling-place election.
Turnout was even higher, 66 percent, in the January 30, 1996, general election. To be sure, some of that turnout might be attributed to the star power of the race and not to the unique mail voting method. But whatever the reason, turnout was higher then usual. Turnout in the 1994 primary, for example, had been 38 percent. In the end, Wyden won in Portland, as Democrats have to do, while Smith won in rural Oregon, as Republicans have to do. But Wyden edged out Smith in the swing Portland suburbs.
Now Republicans turned against vote by mail. In 1997, a year after the Smith-Wyden race, the Oregon House once again approved a bill extending vote by mail to the primary and general election, but it died in the Republican Senate. This time, Kitzhaber, the Democratic governor, said he would have signed it.
Voters, as it turned out, really liked voting by mail. County elections officers, tired of running a polling-place election every two years and vote by mail for all other elections, let voters permanently request absentee ballots for all elections without having to explain why. And voters signed up in droves. Absentee balloting soon became the most popular voting method in Oregon.
In the May 1996 primary, absentee voters cast 36 percent of ballots, and by the general election six months later, they were casting 48 percent. By the May 1998 primary, 63 percent of all votes cast were absentees, the first time a state cast more votes by mail than at polling places. Polling places were becoming quite lonely.
In November 1998, Oregon put the matter to rest when 69 percent of the voters approved a measure expanding vote by mail to all elections. The question won in all 36 counties. In 2000, Oregon became the first state to vote for a president solely on a mail ballot and today, vote by mail is old news. Opponents are out there but increasingly harder to find.
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Here's how vote by mail works. In the three weeks before the election, voters get a packet in the mail. They mark the ballot in blue or black and place it in an anonymous envelope, which is then put in a second envelope. The voter then signs that outer envelope and mails it to the county elections office. The voter pays the 39 cents for the stamp, which doesn't constitute a poll tax, the courts decided, because a voter also may drop it off in person for no charge.
After the ballot arrives, the signature on each envelope is compared with the voter's signature on file from the voter registration card. Voters are called if they forgot to sign the envelope or if the signatures don't match. Ballots cannot be forwarded if a voter has moved.
Ballots are counted by optical scanner. Vote counting can start anytime on Election Day, but no results can be released until 8 p.m. The news media likes this part because by 8 p.m., most of the votes have been counted. The votes in that first tally come from all over. No waiting for late-night rural returns. So the numbers in that first flush of ballots are a far more accurate predictor of the results than the meager numbers that dribble out after the polls close in a polling-place election.
Clearly there was a novelty factor when vote by mail first started. In that 1996 Smith-Wyden Senate race, nearly 60 percent of all ballots had been returned a week before Election Day, according to a study, Early Voting Reforms and American Elections, by Paul Gronke of Reed College. But old habits returned and, by 2000, half the votes came in on the last two days.
Anyone, in fact, can pick up ballots from voters, something that makes critics nervous. Conceivably, partisans could pick up ballots from opponents and never turn them in. There's nothing in the law to prohibit the practice and no way to tell if it happens unless voters follow up later to make sure if their vote was counted. The Legislature has never addressed the issue, apparently reluctant to stop their campaigns from collecting ballots from supporters. Conceivably, too, someone could pay citizens or coerce them to vote a certain way, given the breach of the traditional secrecy of the voting booth. But there has never been a whiff of any such scandal.
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Don't Complain, Organize
So which party does vote by mail favor? Probably neither. Claims to the contrary are based more on hunch than real study. A 1998 University of Michigan study found vote by mail had no bearing on the ability to mobilize more Democrats or more Republicans. Political strategists say vote by mail helps the well-organized, which of course can be said about a polling-place election as well.
Vote by mail benefits the candidate or party with the strongest political infrastructure in the state, Lavey said. Vote by mail helps Republicans in southern states with the NRA, the churches, right-to-life. In Oregon, it tends to help Democrats with the unions. Wyden had the edge there in 1996 with women and the environmentalists.
I truly think it helps neither, Keisling said. The evidence doesn't show one way or another.
Don McIntire, one of the state's most successful anti-tax activists, sees dangers in vote by mail. He thinks it's designed to help Democrats by helping union workers. Call me paranoid but what's at stake is an outcome that affects the governing class, the people on the public payroll, he said.
The 2003 University of Oregon survey found no discernable partisan tilt. Neither of the two major parties have much to lose or gain from vote by mail, the survey said. In the poll, 32 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Republicans said they vote more often under vote by mail. The Gronke study agreed. There is no evidence that it changes the composition of the electorate, it said.
It's worth noting, though, that in the vote-by-mail era, starting with the 2000 election, Democrats have won 10 statewide partisan races, the Republicans just one, Smith's 2002 re-election. Republicans, meanwhile, have generally controlled the Legislature. The swing to the Democrats probably has more do to with political changes and the state's strengthening progressive community than the voting method. A similar swing can be seen in near neighbors Washington and California.
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A More Discerning Electorate
Civic benefits, however, are easier to substantiate. Turnout was 71 percent in 1996, the last presidential polling-place election, but 86 percent in 2004. Other factors, of course, affect voter interest, like the economy and war. Two of Oregon's highest three voter turnouts -- 1960, 1992, and 2004 -- took place before mail voting. In contrast, turnout in the Texas primary this past March barely reached 10 percent.
Vote by mail increases turnout, perhaps by as much as 10 percent, the Gronke study found. However, the turnout increases result from the retention of existing voters and not from the recruitment of new voters into the system, and the increase is noticeable only in low-profile contests.
The boost from mail voting appears greater the smaller the election. Supporters of local tax measures look to it as a way to help increase turnout enough to overcome the double majority law, which requires a turnout of at least 50 percent as well as a majority yes vote to pass property-tax measures. Today, mail voting may be routine to the voting public, but it's brought dramatic changes for the news media and the campaigns themselves. No longer can a candidate plan on peaking on Election Day. The peak starts when the ballots go in the mail three weeks out and continues until the deadline for turning in ballots. It means campaign workers spend more time on the phone contacting voters and getting out the vote. Who voted is public record; how they voted, of course, is not. So the parties can spend the closing days calling their voters who haven't yet voted and urging them to send in the ballot.
It increases the cost of campaigning, said Dan Lavey, a former Smith aide. It took the normal span of activities one would normally prosecute in the final 72 hours and extended it over three weeks. The phone calls, the direct mail. And by the same token, because people could start voting three weeks before Election Day, you need to start your media campaign to have an impact when the first person starts voting as well as when the last person votes. If you think too much money is spent on campaigns, vote by mail is a bad thing.
Vote by mail made life a little more complicated and a lot more hurried for The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper. The paper's policy today is to make sure voters can read in-depth stories of all candidates and ballot measures by the time ballots arrive in the mail. You don't want any major issue uncovered before the ballots are mailed. You still have the same responsibility to readers, said Bruce Hammond, the paper's politics editor from 2000 to 2005. Reporters use the last three weeks to look at other matters, such as campaign-finance reports and the accuracy of last-minute ads. The policy can mean long delays between publication of a major look in September, say, at a ballot measure -- Oregon had a record 26 in 2000 -- and someone voting in November.
Mail voting does save money, said John Kauffman, elections supervisor for Multnomah County, home to Portland. The 1996 general election -- the last presidential race at a polling place -- cost $3.31 per vote cast. The county needed 3,000 workers to manage the 1996 election but just 300 for 2004. Postage and supplies are the major expenses but are fairly modest compared to the new machines other states have to buy under the Help America Vote Act. Vote by mail eliminated the logistical hassles and risks of moving the machines, hiring and training the workers, and opening and maintaining the polling places. I'd dread having to go back to polling-place elections, Kauffman said.
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Worries and Safeguards
The mail ballot also simplifies the purging of voter rolls of people who have died or moved away. An undeliverable ballot itself purges the voter rolls of anyone who can no longer receive mail at a particular address. If any of them go astray and are used improperly, the signature match should catch them.
Jitters remain about weakness in the system, a holdover, no doubt, of Florida in 2000, and worries about glitches in the hardware and software in other states. Oregon has its stories of voters receiving more than one ballot or ballots intended for someone else. And there are worries about partisans coming into hospitals or retirement homes and filling out ballots for those unable to manage on their own. No concrete evidence has ever been found of such episodes taking place. Any organized effort to bribe voters would likely come to light.
The most important safeguard may be the voter's signature. The autograph on the outside of the ballot envelope has to match the signature on file from the voter registration card, a comparison done by an elections worker looking at the envelope and a computer screen. It's not blind luck. The same organization that trains the Oregon State Police in signature recognition trains elections workers. When signatures don't match, voters are called and asked to explain. Sometimes there's been a hand injury. Sometimes the signature on the card is old. Signatures change as we age. Sometimes a husband may think it's all right to sign his wife's ballot. It's not. Elections workers threw out more than 1,000 ballots in 2004 because they couldn't verify their signatures.
Duplicate balloting has been one of the few glitches in Oregon's system. It's rare but can happen when, say, someone moves and still receives mail at the old address. Most people who move have mail forwarded and the Postal Service isn't supposed to forward election ballots. One voter did cast two ballots in 2004 but was caught. Most people who actually get two ballots are honest enough to report the problem to the elections office. Vote fraud is, after all, a felony. A statewide voter registration database, mostly up and running this spring, will cancel old registrations once an Oregon voter re-registers in another county.
Motivated criminals have always been able to break elections systems, but fraud is usually discovered or takes place on such a small a scale that it doesn't matter. Large-scale fraud, the kind that might actually make a difference in an election, would probably involve too many people to be kept quiet.
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What Oregon Avoids
Attaining perfection in an election system may be unrealistic. Glitches don't matter anyway when the results are decisive. But as we've learned, though, extremely close races may be more common. Washington Governor Chris Gregoire won in 2004 by 129 votes out of 2.7 million cast. And President Bush, of course, won Florida in 2000 by 537 votes out of more than 5.8 million cast. Minutiae can matter.
Perhaps the greatest success of the Oregon system is that it's not what other states are going through. Other states are struggling to upgrade their election systems amid scary stories of botched balloting and fears of vote fraud, corrupt machines, crooked software, and not enough accountability.
Oregon hasn't had a particularly contentious political culture, staying mostly free of big-city political machines like in Chicago or New York. That means no one's political livelihood depended on polling-place elections and the state was flexible enough to shift gears smoothly, although slowly, to a new system. All states, after all, already conduct vote-by-mail elections with absentee ballots. Oregon just made absentee balloting its only method.
The state may have lost some traditional rituals of democracy, but it certainly picked up new ones along the way.
Don Hamilton, a former political writer for The Oregonian, lives and votes in Portland.
