It would make an even better turnout if we didn't have to supply the stamp ourselves. Can't the state make the envelopes 'business reply'?

Intuitively and based on admittedly anecdotal personal experience, I would tend to agree that VBM drives a higher voter turnout. Curiosity demands I look at arguments (and facts) to the contrary. I'd love to see links to discussion on the opposite position.

And yes, I completed my ballot within 49 hours of its arrival, and it is awaiting pickup by a uniformed representative of the United States Postal Service as I write this. I endorse the practice of voting early, if not often.

Eric,

Rep. Nancy Davis has a piece of legislation that will mandate postage-free absentee ballots, along with two other proposed pieces of legislation that should be of interest to reform advocates.

This won't help turnout, by the way. The cost of a stamp is not a large cost to the voter. Still, there's not a good reason not to make it postage free, even if the effects are minimal.

Kari,

Man, only a USC fan could use that quarterback metaphor! How about this: if your Trojans ends up ranked ahead of my Wolverines, I'll admit defeat.

All joking aside, I do place credence in the sense of campaigners. The academic studies are not "all over the place," on that we'll just disagree, but I do think there are important questions still to be answered. As I said before, I'd love to sit down with you over a beer and describe the work I've been doing and get your reactions.

My gut feeling right now is that there is a turnout effect, but to track it, you really need to have a good model of prior expected turnout--and we are getting increasingly good leverage on that question.

I was just wondering because it would be an even faster turnaround if the envelope were postage free - albeit a minute one.

Re: Stamps

Finding a Number 2 pencil always slows me down far more than locating a stamp. I don't understand why my inexpensive document scanner can pick up even light blue ink, but the ballot scanners require thick graphite. Just sayin'.

I'm just disappointed that Kari hasn't responded to the USC comment yet.

So, Paul, what about Prof. Patricia Southwell's study five years out that showed VBM made people more regular voters, especially the elderly, people with disabilities, and stay-at-home mothers (see OR SOS website)?

There is NO debate about the fact that VBM improves turnout in off-year elections. That's why the county clerks pushed it in the first place. So in the long run, it increases turnout because more regular voters will vote more... regularly. VBM makes it easier for voting to become a habit.

We also crunched some numbers after Nov 2006 in the office and found that, even given Curtis Gans' way of figuring statistics, our turnout increased 2 points while the average turnout across the country went down. I'd say that's significant.

I'd also like to point out that the entire country - including AP - relies on ONE COLLEGE PROFESSOR, Curtis Gans - to determine turnout numbers for the entire nation. Even AP goes to him. Given the "lies, damn lies and statistics" philosophy, I think we should have at least one other source to check out. Any takers?

Lastly, on Election Night, as you watch TV reports from around the cold, wet, rainy, snowy country at people standing in long lines at a polling place, you know in your heart, don't you, that more people would do it if they could vote at home.

Isn't a more engaged electorate what we want? VBM makes that much more likely.

It's federal law that once you miss two consecutive Presidential elections, you have to be moved to "inactive" status, then pro-actively re-register. So Oregon does what every other state does in that regard.

With VBM, we have an extraordinary opportunity to keep people engaged because, even when they moved and their ballot doesn't get forwarded, the county clerk sends a postcard that DOES get forwarded reminding the voter that they missed and election and should re-register.

If they move within the same county, the clerk automatically updates their registration. We simply have the best system around.

And yes, I speak as a (briefly) unemployed Oregonian - but one who used to be Chief of Communications for the Secretary of State. A year in that office made me a real believer in the safety, security and accuracy of our voting system. The only way to beef up turnout is, however, increasing voter registration. VBM was not designed to increase that.

Kari: Maybe. I'm wondering if maybe my world down here would be better written about as a separate blog - SoSal, South of Salem. It really feels to me like the state divides that way and I don't want to bore Blue O readers.

I'll take feedback.

And Sal is right. HB 2082 made the initiative process easier for citizens (e.g., downloadable signature sheets) and increases both training and responsibility for paid signature gatherers. I think win-win.

I think part of the debate happening on this post is a Moneyball/Freakonomics thing. Campaigning has been as much of an art as a science and has lent itself to arguments about intuition and feeling. However, tradition does not make this type of argument inherently reliable. It is possible the conventional, received wisdom is wrong. It has been awhile since I studied the literature (full disclosure: I was a student of Paul's at Reed), but I seem to recall that the turnout gains from vote by mail have been very modest. More importantly, the increased turnout is not coming from disaffected voters who never vote but instead, it comes from turning occasional voters into regular voters. The small increase in turnout in recent cycles is not surprising since the national turnout numbers are rising as well. Oregon has high voter turnout but this has always been true. To attribute this level of voter participation to vote by mail would ignore the state’s political history and scientific evidence.

About Curtis Gans. He was once interviewed on the radio and made a sarcastic remark beginning, "Anyone who couldn't walk to the polls...".

My old polling place is in a school about a mile away. But how many people who don't live in the Portland, Eugene, or Salem area can walk to their polling place? I have driven voters to the polls, but not every car can deal with someone in a wheelchair. Do people like Gans have problems with handicapped access laws also?

And who died and made Curtis Gans king? There was vote by mail for the special election in Jan. 1996 which elected Ron Wyden over Gordon Smith--how many counties had bad weather (incl. snow and ice) the day the polls were due? Wasn't there another election when some jurisdiction was flooded on election day? Not to mention the 2000 umpteen ballot measures, or the efforts made for years prior to vote by mail by both parties to sign up absentee voters? Is Curtis Gans saying we Oregonians had a lot of nerve voting over time (maybe a couple each sitting) on those umpteen ballot measures because we should have stood in line to vote on all of those and not complain how long it took?

Do we really want a system (esp. given the long commutes of some people, the complications of picking up kids at day care and still finding time to get to the polls, the people who do shift work, etc.) where it is very difficult for some people to find the time to go stand in line at a polling station?

Esp. when it is pretty clear that there were some jurisdictions across the country (like Ohio) where some pcts. were shorted voting machines as a way to keep turnout down because people couldn't afford the time to stand in line for over an hour?

My county clerk was in favor of Vote by Mail because it was getting to the point that he had to staff all the polling stations with people who weren't busy most of the time because something like 70% of the voters in the county were absentee voters (some permanent absentee) and in that situation the polling books must be closed before absentee ballots can be counted.

As I understand the premise, there are disciples of Gans who claim he has the revealed truth and we should ignore the views of county elections officials because all they do is run elections, they don't really know anything.

Sal,

I'm glad you think I am an expert on the Oregon legislature, but it's not the case. I study voting, elections, and public opinion, not state referenda and initiatives.

Believe it or not, I can make an uninformed comment on a blog just like anyone else. I appreciated your correction there, though others may disagree that HB2082 represents a major reform.

My research on voting by mail is all available at my website. My comments about the state of the academic literature is based on a review of about 10 peer reviewed articles, most of which were not written by me. I have four peer reviewed articles on the subject.

If you think there is an error in the research, please feel free to point it out.

-- Chris,

Both. There are a number of studies that estimate a well behaved model of turnout with data collected in Oregon from 1960-2006 and include a vbm dummy variable in the model. The first of these showed a significant vbm effect, but only included the first three vbm elections. The replication and extension study dummied out the first three elections, trying to see if there was a "novelty effect" (after all, the first three VBM elections were quite unique), and showed a much smaller effect since then.

The other studies that I'm referring to all examine VBM in Oregon over time (Berinsky et al., Karp and Banducci, Traugott and Hanmer). A.Rab above summarizes the results pretty well--small turnout effect, and mainly by bringing regular voters into the system in lower profile contests.

There are several caveats. No study to date has examined lower level contests (below House races), a definite hole in the research. There have been very few individual level analyses--most rely on aggregate data. And many studies stopped studying VBM after 2000.

I'm in the process of trying to plug each of these gaps. The big problem with examining Oregon is the way we implemented VBM all at once. The Washington case gives us much better statistical leverage on the question.

Kari, No fair. They won two I-AA Championships. :-)

My question is, why can't Oregon at least give people the option of voting at the polls on election day? Not everyone has privacy at home, and there's no way to monitor VBM for coercive and manipulative acts by spouses, etc. ("Don't bother your pretty little head about politics, honey, I'll take care of it for you.") The potential for abuse is enormous, but has been given little consideration.

Another compelling argument against mandatory VBM is that encouraging people to vote early short-circuits campaigns that depend on voter education. This should be of particular concern to progressives, whose arguments are often counter-intuitive to the way most Americans have been conditioned to think, and thus need time to make an impression. Polls were trending against Measure 37 in the final weeks of the campaign, and it might have been stopped if most people had waited until election day to vote. Along the same lines, I think it is unwise to vote for a candidate before the campaign is over. You never know what you might find out about him/her after you mail your ballot if you vote early. I NEVER turn in my ballot before election day, mainly for this reason.

My suggestion: Give an absentee ballot to anyone who requests one - no reason needed - but let the rest of us vote normally. California does this, and most people there seem satisfied with the system the way it is (touch screen voting machines notwithstanding, but that's a separate issue).

Oregon was very careful about implementing Vote BY Mail, over a 10 year period. Still yet, some in Oregon say that other states may make a mess of things if they aren't careful. Take a look at this article on Vote By Mail by Michael Slater of Project Vote - here is an important comment about what the "high turnout" figures actually mean:

Colorado law requires election officials to place voters who have missed a single general election on an “inactive list.” Voters on the inactive list do not receive a mail ballot. In this case, Denver voters who missed the 2006 general election did not receive their ballots in the mail. More than 117,000 voters were left out of the election as a consequence. Ironically, many Denver voters were unable to cast a ballot in 2006 because of the city’s well-reported failure of its electronic poll book system.

Distinguishing between “active” and “inactive” voters and then mailing ballots to only active voters is the practice Oregon, Washington, and California, in addition to Colorado. No federal law protects voters against this administrative sleight of hand.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/06/29/votebymail_doesnt_deliver.php

<h2>Not saying don't do vote by mail, just saying there is more to it than meets the eye, and it might not be a good idea in some states, espcially if there is a fraud problem.</h2>