Voting By Mail

Several years ago, there was a presidential election fiasco. Voters throughout America, and especially in Florida, were disenfranchised or not allowed to vote at all.

The ensuing confusion and delay of an outcome resulted in federal legislation called the HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT, known as HAVA.

One of the requirements of HAVA was that states had to determine more reliable methods of voting. Utah chose to use electronic voting machines. Because those machines are expensive to purchase and maintain, Utah State Legislature provided a way for communities with less than 500 registered voters per precinct to vote with absentee ballots instead. 

Many small towns can’t afford to vote electronically, and the cost to counties to provide voting machines to small precincts is huge.  For example, it costs the county nearly $13 per vote to provide electronic voting machines to Rockville voters while a mail-in vote costs less than $3 per vote. The difference is less dramatic in larger towns, but it is still substantially different: never less than double the cost.  The savings to taxpayers is significant.

Strangely, communities are not allowed to determine whether they are vote-by-mail precincts. That decision can be made only by county commissions. There are many precincts in Utah that vote by mail, but this is the first year it has been done in Washington County.

Beside cost savings, there are other benefits to voting by mail:

• •   No early voting costs. Early voting requires poll workers to be available at least four hours a day for two weeks before the election.
• •   No Early Voting Costs, Staff or ID Issues. If a small town decides to use absentee ballots for early voting, when a voter comes in person to vote or pick up a ballot, the staff must stop everything they are doing and give the voter their undivided attention. Most small town staffs wear a lot of hats – it’s unrealistic to expect them to let the phones ring unanswered, for example, which they have to do if they are assisting a voter. The 2008 legislature enacted a law which requires voters that go to a polling place to provide identification that proves they live where they are registered. The potential for delays and disenfranchisement at the polling place increased dramatically. That law doesn’t apply to absentee voters. 
• •   Voter turnout higher. It has been proven in our state and many other states that voting by mail is popular: People really vote.  Most vote-by-mail elections have substantially higher returns – 80% to 90% is not uncommon.

For these reasons, Springdale, Rockville, Virgin, Leeds and Apple Valley approached the Washington County Commission to ask for vote-by-mail status.  The Commission granted them permission to run the 2009 elections by mail, but withheld permission for subsequent years. Their reasoning? They think people who vote by mail are less informed than people who go to the polls. We respectfully disagree, but this blog was created to provide as much information to our voters as possible. 

We’re hopeful that voters will find voting by mail convenient and easy – resulting in the kind of turnout that will help us persuade the Commission to let us vote by mail every year. 

Please research your candidates, then VOTE.