The busiest Culver City mayor in memory, Jim Clarke makes news almost daily in his unending quest to pragmatically improve quality of life in the community.
All-mail voting is today’s subject – because the mayor believes such a change seriously would spike voter turnout.
Typically, four out of five registered voters brush their teeth on Election Day.
They visit their favorite service station, walk the dog – everything they do the rest of the year except fill out a ballot.
Long an advocate of all-mail voting, Mr. Clarke contends that this switch not only would hike turnout but would restore normalcy to campaigns.
One huge advantage, he says, would be that early-voting, a big hit in recent years, would be eliminated.
“The current way, with early voting, means that you have to move much earlier,” Mr. Clarke said. “Precinct walking and phone banking must be changed to reach the early voters before they fill in their ballots.”
Weeks’ early voting means voters can cast their ballots when it is convenient for them, while complicating candidates’ campaign strategies, reaching mainly the voters who have not yet marked their choices.
“If you have a permanent absentee ballot,” said the mayor, “you can sit in the quiet of your home, go over the material, and you are not being rushed, feeling someone is looking over your shoulder.”
Mr. Clarke acknowledges a disadvantage. “Some people don’t trust that their ballot is going to be counted if they drop it into the mailbox,” he said. “With early voting, you can drop it off yourself, even on Election Day, and be sure it is counted.”
Looks like the politicians are looking for ways to make running for office easier on themselves and more cost-effective for their campaigns, not in making it more secure for the voters to cast their ballots.
At least, now when voters enter their polling place they know they will be in a controlled, non-political, environment: Absent the candidate/supporters hyperbolic rhetoric. In voting by mail, there are no such guarantees under what conditions ballots would be marked.
With all-mail voting, voters would lose the sanctity of both, the polling place and ballot booth; only to replace it with a new experimental, free-for-all ballot environment completely outside the polling place.
Now, after marking their ballots, voters leave the voting booth, take a few steps with their completed ballot in-hand and slip it into an officially secured, locked box; knowing it will be opened, only later and counted at election headquarters by sworn officials, after voting closes.
With All-Mail voting, this self-assured security would be lost.