This story almost certainly will get national attention from right-wing blogs... plays right into their meme about "rampant" voter fraud and how it is more pressing than, e.g., suppression of minority voting in other states.

What the heck!? I mean ref mistakes are factored into football games. Ump mistakes move a baseball game in some direction. Voter fraud is just part of the election game. Let's work on getting rid of the Electoral College first before we worry about dead people voting. Anyway, if a dead person can still pay taxes why can't he vote?

I wonder if annual voter registration might not be a bad thing anymore...that way you register each year (could be combined with your annual state income tax filing?) and you are then registered to vote in that year's primary and general election.

It could also serve as an annual census.

Yes, it's a little "big brotherly" and yes it'd cost more, but we would gain more accurate population counts (rather than the "official estimates" from PSU) and it would help reduce voter fraud. We would also have more accurate registered voter counts, and could purge ineligible voters (i.e. dead voters, relocated voters) much quicker than the current system in that you can theoretically be registered to vote indefinitely. For example, my wife is still registered to vote in Portland/Multnomah County because she didn't update her registration when we moved to Tigard.

PJB,

except this guys is right out of central casting for a tea party rally.

Doesn't fit the illegal immigrant or felon registered by ACCORN meme that the GOP is pushing

We've been voting by mail for years, and I still miss going to the polls. I miss standing in line with my neighbors, signing in and going into the booth to vote. The process felt like a solemn ritual, not to be taken lightly, whereas voting by mail feels mundane -- likely to put off and dismiss.

Funny the only voting fraud I am personally aware of was during Shrub Jr's first election. A family who owned property in both NY and FL voted for Shrub in both states.... and the FL vote (oh wait remember that fiasco) was the fraudulent one. Both parties are scary with fraud.

If you want scary fictional but entirely possible scenario for massive voter fraud and election rigging, check this book out:

http://us.macmillan.com/foolproof

Electronic voting booths are ripe for fraud. And as a computer geek, I'll be the first to stand up and tell you the lo and many ways.

Absolutely, Nolo. Going to the polls was good for our communities. Voting at the kitchen table is dumb. And it's just an invitation to fraud.

I've been _extremely_ skeptical about the integrity of vote-by-mail from the moment it was imposed on us. All one has to do is go down to the county elections office on SE Morrison on the day of a general election and watch the number of drivers pulling up and turning in fistfuls of ballots out their car windows to county workers on the sidewalk. What's up with that?

G Joubert - My ballot was often turned in at SE Morrison by my ex-partner. So seeing someone with more than one ballot could be friends/roommates/spouses whatever. That doesn't concern me that much. Bullies telling family members how to vote scares me more.

They don't even have to be bullies. I'm sure there are households where only one person is seriously interested in the election, and everyone else is happy to hand him/her their (signed, blank) ballots to fill out. I could see that happening in my college communal house if VBM had existed back then.

As for "ballot parties" and living-room conversations (I believe that's Kate Brown's argument), you don't need actual ballots for this. The printed voter's guide is the essential tool here.

LucsAdvo-

Two ballots is understandable. Maybe even three or four. That's not what I'm talking about. I see stacks of ballots being turned in. Go watch for yourself. And that's only one little thing about vote-by-mail that makes me seriously wonder about it.

Kate Brown is now working on legislation that will allow voting by email where you mark, "Yes" if you are a US citizen and "Yes" if you are 18 years or older. Then for those you haven't a computer, she has Voter Ballots printed on Coca Puff and Cheerio boxes.

Excuse me, "you" should be "who".

"Funny the only voting fraud I am personally aware of was during Shrub Jr's first election."

If this is a true statement, you are horribly, horribly uninformed.

Who cares? I mean, any way you cut it, we end up with elected "officals" such as Portland's mayor and Wes Cooley.

The Democrats are still fuming about Dubya winning Florida because stealing Presidetial elections was their strong suit. Ask all those stiff JFK supporters in Chicago: most of them are still voting.

America's Decoupling from Reality, by Robert Parry, Sept. 17

When Gore still narrowly defeated Bush in Election 2000, the major news media stood aside as Bush and the Republicans stole the White House.

After Bush’s allies on the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the counting of votes in Florida to give him the “victory,” some executives at major publications felt that pointing out the fact that Gore actually won – if all votes legal under Florida law had been counted – would undermine Bush’s “legitimacy” and thus it was better not to let the public know. In other words, ignorance had become bliss.

Some columnists, like the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, went so far as to hail the overturning of the popular will under the theory that Bush would be a uniter, while Gore would be a divisive figure.

The see-no-evil attitude hardened after the 9/11 attacks when mainstream outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, consciously misreported their own findings of a Gore victory in Florida, based on an unofficial media recount. Instead of leading with that remarkable fact, they buried the lede and highlighted that Bush would still have won some partial, hypothetical recounts.

CASTLE DEFEATS O'DONNELL IN DELAWARE! - (According to the ballots that can be verified anyway), By Brad Friedman, 9/15/2010

... hotly contested race for the GOP's U.S. Senate nomination in Delaware ended in victory for the state's moderate, much-beloved former Governor and nine-term U.S. Congressman Mike Castle --- at least according to the tabulation of ballots cast in the race which can actually be verified by anybody as having been recorded accurately as per the voters' intent.

... the number of absentee ballots cast as a percentage of the total votes was quite small (1,499 absentee ballots, versus 56,083 cast on Election Day), so one should be careful of reading too much into those numbers ....

Those factors, and certainly others, could certainly explain the nearly-reversed percentages as reportedly cast on Election Day on the e-voting systems, ....

But the point here is: Who knows? Absolutely nobody does. I don't. YOU don't. O'Donnell doesn't. Castle doesn't. The State of Delaware doesn't. Even the manufacturer of the e-voting system, Danaher/Guardian, would be unable to prove who actually won or lost the race one way or another.

What would we guess?, there must be 20 or 50 thousand fraud-filled ballots (out of over 1 million normally statewide) here, with one half of the fraud cancelling out the other half of the fraud? ... or is one (rightwing fairplay-challenged) type of voter more bent on trying fraud and deceits to 'win at any cost' than the other type of voter?

Oregon's 100% all absentee ballots, all the time -- readable, retrievable, recountable -- seems like totally the worst methodical process for determining election tallies and winners, EXCEPT FOR all the other ways of doing it in all the other States.

J. Fairplay - you clearly misunderstood what I said. Let me be very clear for you when I said personally aware of the fraud, I meant that in a first hand, legally able to testify in a court of law way. Not in an awareness way which is BTW considered hearsay. I am aware of a lot but personally aware meanst first hand not second or third.

I love these Liberal blogs. It is always someone elses fault!