Vote-by-mail is nothing more than a transparent attempt to tip the scales toward Democrat candidates, and it is already ripe for fraud and abuse in its current limited form.
Arkansas already has a vote-by-mail-system similar to what is being advocated by a previously rejected Secretary of State candidate in a recent Perspective guest column. It is called absentee ballots, and in the 2016 general election 4 percent of Arkansas' voters voted absentee. The low percentage was a good thing because voting by mail presents the biggest opportunity for election fraud.
I have knowledge of violations where the wife of a small-town postmaster diverted absentee ballots to a candidate for mayor and of people following a postal carrier and removing delivered absentee ballots from mailboxes. Those went unprosecuted but, in 2013, (former) state Rep. Hudson Hallum and his father were prosecuted for election fraud with absentee ballots in Crittenden County and paid costly penalties.
Can you imagine the opportunities for election fraud if 1,759,974 paper ballots were mailed to all registered voters rather than only 42,736 absentee ballots? Additionally, a strictly vote-by-mail system creates the potential for what one columnist called a "single point of failure"--the U.S. Postal Service. What could possibly go wrong there?
While vote-by-mail may be okay for Washington, Colorado and Oregon--and all reports from those states are not favorable--they have one, two and three million more registered voters respectively than we do. So let's separate facts from campaign rhetoric.
Susan Inman claims vote-by-mail "creates a paper trail in the event an election is contested." Duh, both the old and new voting systems in Arkansas have paper trails, and she knows this.
She claims vote-by-mail is "safe" because "votes are cast on paper and vote-counting machines are not connected to the Internet, [so] the risk of hacking is eliminated." The truth of the matter is none of Arkansas' vote tabulators for paper or electronic votes have ever been connected to the Internet. Inman also knows this fact but nevertheless tries to scare voters to her point of view.
Then Inman plays the "make elections safe from cyber intrusion" card. The only system vulnerable to cyber intrusion is the online voter registration system, and Arkansas has a good firewall. Even so, if a bad actor managed to hack into voter registration rolls, why afford them the opportunity to add thousands of names and addresses and open the door to election fraud by switching to vote-by-mail?
With voter ID we know who is voting in person or by absentee ballot. Additionally, with fail-safe voting, if there is a question about voter eligibility, a provisional ballot comes into play. With vote-by-mail, voters are not afforded that opportunity; they are simply disenfranchised.
Inman claims vote-by-mail would "save Arkansas taxpayers millions of dollars in equipment and labor costs," and "we need to do it now." The cost of a single high-speed bulk paper-ballot tabulator (i.e., M-850) is about $100,000 per unit. It would take several million dollars to outfit all 75 counties if Arkansas converted to vote-by-mail.
It also presents a logistical nightmare for election officials. Pulaski County has 305 ballot styles for the November election. Try sorting that out to ensure each of its 243,242 registered voters receives the correct ballot. And what about the millions of dollars already spent and that will be spent after the next legislative session upgrading Arkansas' voting equipment that should serve Arkansas' needs for 15 years?
Inman correctly claims the number of polling sites is being reduced. What she failed to mention is vote centers are being established in their place, permitting any registered voter of that county to go into any vote center on election day and vote regardless of where they live. Yes, recruiting and training poll workers remains a problem, but how about we pay them a decent wage for the long day they put in?
Or better still: Resolve access and recruiting problems by using government facilities for polling places with their administrative staffs serving as poll workers. That works very well in other counties.
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Stuart Soffer is a recognized Republican election professional who has served as a Jefferson County election commissioner since 2003 and until recently, as a state election commissioner for six years. He is immediate past president of the Arkansas County Election Commissions Association.
Editorial on 09/20/2018