How Casting Votes by Mail Could Work (Well)

This PN report may not wax apolitical but, at the very least, it earnestly attempts to be non-partisan. After all, a presidential election will take place in fewer than 100 days, and statistics show that the number of registered voters is rising in America. (Approximately 139 million of-age, U.S. citizens voted in the ’16 election.)

No matter which party we lean toward politically, everyone will need the opportunity to cast votes if they choose to do their civic duties and attempt to affect change. For the purposes of this article, how we will vote is almost as important as for whom. Without a vaccine available for COVID-19, can U.S. citizens safely vote at traditional, walk-up polling stations in the Pandemic Age of physical and social distancing? Many people feel that American citizens over the age of 18 should not have to choose between their health and casting a ballot. Officials in a handful of Western states have declared that in-person voting is unsafe, so those five states are implementing all-mail elections in 2020.

There’s little debate that the trend toward universal VBM has been growing for decades, but most state governments are ill-equipped for a massive surge. During Wisconsin’s presidential primary and judicial general election this past April, a pandemic-concerned public -- nearly half of the state’s poll workers are over 60 -- requested eight times more absentee ballots than in the previous election.

“We have coordinated an industry response to meet an anticipated shortfall in capacity by the existing ballot-mail vendors," said Thayer Long, president of the Association for PRINT Technologies. "The issue is not the printing. The issue is the mailing. You need high-integrity/verification insertion technology to do this. We are working with U.S. Postal Service, DHS Cybersecurity, MIT/Stanford, the leading industry vendors in the space, suppliers, OEMS, etc.”

Voting by mail seems a viable alternative; a solution to the challenge facing election commissioners in the Coronavirus era – but, as Long says, only if print and mail-service providers can execute securely and results can be tallied accurately. With so much at stake, voter-identification and fraud concerns loom large. Many people, especially Republicans (and including President Donald Trump), believe that the vote-by-mail system is controversial at best. At its worst, VBM is prone to corrupt practices, they say, unless all states require photo ID (Alabama is one that does not) and adopt other safeguards, such as signature-verification software. (See sidebar.) Leading up to November, cynics suggest that the number of lawsuits surrounding VBM will rise along with the number of mail-in ballots.

False Narrative?

However, the other side cries “false narrative” and argues that mail-in options encourage people to vote, particularly during a pandemic. Many VBM proponents do not hesitate to mention systemic racism when it comes to Black and Latino voters.

“Voter suppression of all types is connected to institutional racism,” said Gail Johnson, the former village president of Oswego, Ill., a municipality (population: 31,000) situated 47 miles west and south of Chicago. “That’s not a partisan comment. It’s fact."

Many political observers view the technology-versus-human error debate as six of one, a half-dozen of another: Errors are errors, whether they are committed during low-tech, manual processing at polls or during high-tech, automated processing in the mail. At Georgia’s primary election in early June, despite the state’s infrastructure investment of more than $100 million, voters suffered through long lines only to be frustrated by malfunctioning voting machines. Officials then ran out of back-up provisional ballots. Older readers will recall that the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) is a U.S federal law written (at least in part) in reaction to the controversy surrounding the 2000 U.S. presidential election, when almost 2 million ballots were disqualified because they registered multiple votes or none when run through vote-counting machines.

Accountability is crucial on the automation side, said Amber McReynolds, CEO for the National Vote At Home Institute and Coalition (https://www.voteathome.org/).

“To help state and county officials do it well and get it right … we need to know where ballots are in the process,” McReynolds said.

“Government IT [information technology] departments want to understand security and reporting," said Rick Bacerra, VP of sortation solutions and strategy at production-mail firm BlueCrest. "Ensuring voter confidence is paramount, and it all comes down to integrity, security, control and tracking.”

Approximately 30% of Americans who vote now do so via absentee ballots, added McReynolds, who is a former director of elections for the city of Denver, Colo.

“We’ve seen migration mostly in western states … Arizona, Colorado and California,” she explained during a May best-practices webinar hosted by the APTech association. “Six states now mail a ballot to every elector. There are two others where the majority of electors get their ballots by mail. So there now are eight states with a lot of experience dealing with high volumes.”

VBM is encroaching eastward and soon could become the dominant method of voting among all Americans, McReynolds added. As much as half the country could vote by mail this year. Depending on voter turnout, that number could approach 70 million ballots in November and might exceed 100 million, she predicts, “which would be a complete reversal from 2016” when some 40 million ballots (30%) were mailed.

“Voters are asking for it,” McReynolds said. "They’re opting themselves in at record numbers … and pushing [the issue].”

This comes as no shock to vote-by-mail pioneer Bev Clarno, the Secretary of State in Oregon, which has been successfully implementing the process for the past 22 years. She is surprised, however, that VBN has taken this long to come to other states. Of Oregon’s 2.8 million voters in 2016, only 20 cases of people voting in two states were reported, she said. In a June 28 broadcast of “60 Minutes” on CBS-TV, Clarno said she’ll take that extremely low percentage of error every time. The secret to Oregon’s track record, she added, is employing the use of barcodes that are “unique to each voter.” That, plus Oregonians have access to secure drop-boxes.

Demand and Supply

To meet the surging print/mail demand, some new companies are entering the fray, which is challenging because “there’s a steep learning curve” when it comes to the complexities of election awareness, McReynolds said.

"There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States that all handle their elections slightly differently," Long said. "Michigan has 1,500 townships.”

"In Georgia, where there are 159 counties, the state is sharing its voter-registration data with one vendor,” McReynolds said, noting that Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are considering similar, single-vendor relationships for streamlining and consistency purposes. It’s a fiduciary decision.

“States get better postage rates when they bulk mail,” she said, so they save tax-payer dollars.

Existing third-party vendors are more likely partners for state governments because these firms already are familiar with many election standards (such as appropriate logo usage, for example) for outbound and inbound mailings. Using proper paper stock and meeting machine-scannable ink specifications often are the easy parts of the print job. These partners bring value when they make recommendations and offer the most cost-effective solutions to election officials, who rely on such professional advice. Understanding postal regulations and coordinating with the Post Office is a key component, “as is having an awareness of the potentially high volume rates,” McReynolds said.

Some vendors have converted and scaled up operations to employ high-integrity methods such as barcode reading/matching, variable envelope printing and mail-run data files. The bottom line is that ample opportunities exists for print service providers (PSPs) and mailers with experience in producing high-end marketing mail and handling sensitive data (think HIPPA), said Brook Spaulding, marketing development manager for inserting expert W+D North America, which in June sold 11 of its model BB700 S2 high-speed inserters for vote-by-mail solutions to Runbeck Election Services of Phoenix.

For accurate insertion to take place, “good data in equates to good data out,” Spaulding said.

Incorporating inline sensors and cameras on its mail-finishing devices helps W+D to facilitate precise insertion accuracy and high-level integrity per piece.

McReynolds added that “intelligent” mail barcodes on envelopes, which Clarno referenced in Oregon, are critical for tracking through the Postal Service.

“Ballot-tracking solutions … allow for the monitoring of pieces from creation and printing, through the sorting portion, and all the way until counties get returned ballots in their hands,” she said.

BlueCrest offers proprietary software as part of its election management systems. Relia-Vote is an integrated, secure, end-to-end vote-by-mail solution for sorting and processing outbound and inbound mail ballots.

“On some projects, we’ve used the USPS’s Informed Delivery service and incorporated PURLs [personalized URLs] into the mailings,” said Lori Swetlin, the firm’s industry specialist for high-volume customer communications.

Arizona and Colorado are two of the western states ramping up ballot mail, as is heavily populated California. Toppan Merrill, formerly Merrill Corp., has been composing pre-election booklets for municipalities in California (total population: 40 million) for four decades. Some states may publish one book for all voters, while others buy advertisements in newspapers. 

Prior to mailing absentee ballots, election-code regulations there “require the state to provide residents with a book of candidates and proposed rule changes,” said Roy Gross, the company’s senior VP of election services.

Toppan Merrill coordinates variable data for 13,000 versions, including multiple languages, then manages printing and distribution to 11 million people, “which represents about 70% of the market. The versions differ based on county, [political] party, address, school district, etc.,” Gross said.

While his firm is not prepared to jump into the ballot-printing game at this late stage, he and his colleagues are watching closely, Gross said.

“We are taking a hard look at it from a market potential standpoint. A key piece to this is getting certified by the voting-machine companies,” he said. 

Gross explained that if universal vote-by-mail print volumes prove feasible -- and Toppan Merrill decides this is a direction in which its management team wishes to proceed – the firm will continue its due diligence into Q1 2021 and be ready for the ’22 primary election cycle.

Present-Day Reality

The Coronavirus outbreak indeed has acted as a catalyst for VBM, said Dan Bentley, an election specialist with the USPS. There is an enhanced sense of urgency. During the APTech webinar, he noted that “Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Hawaii have moved to all-mail elections for 2020 … and many [other] jurisdictions are enhancing and broadening their use of absentee balloting. Over the past several months, we’ve seen more executive orders and administrative actions offering support [for voting by mail].”

Americans are not only electing a U.S. president and vice president this cycle.

“There are tens of thousands of elections in the second half of 2020,” he said, including those for:

• 35 Senate seats (and two specials)
• All 435 House of Representatives’ seats (every two years)
• 11 Governors’ races
• Plus, all the local elections are coming up

The general public’s comfort level with the idea of VBM does seem to be increasing.

“Tens of millions of American voters have their ballots handed to them by their USPS Postal Carrier, not a poll worker,” said Tammy Patrick, senior elections advisor at the Democracy Fund.

But it’s not only the absentee and mail-in ballots themselves running through the mailstream.

“In the 2018 election cycle, the USPS delivered 2.6 billion pieces of 'political mail' [promoting specific candidates],” Bentleysaid, and another “283 million pieces of outbound ‘election mail.’”

The latter can include voter communication pieces, registration mailings, absentee ballot requests “and sample ballots that go out in advance,” he said.

Election Mail & Envelope Design Resources

Election mail-piece design has to be “made clear for the voters,” Vote At Home’s McReynolds said. Here are two resources that can help:

• Center for Civic Design: https://civicdesign.org/
• U.S. Postal Service: https://about.usps.com/kits/kit600.pdf

Absentee vs. Mail-in Ballots

Vote By Mail (VBM) differs from absentee balloting, which is designed for military and overseas voters, including business people traveling and students studying abroad. “Absentee” roots date back to the Civil War as a way for soldiers to cast a ballot in their home states. The idea of allowing military voters to cast a ballot "in absentia" is still one of the driving factors for states allowing absentee ballots, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. All states, by federal law, are required to send absentee ballots to military and overseas voters, which could include business people traveling and college students studying abroad, for federal elections.

For domestic voters wishing to vote absentee or by mail, 16 states require voters to provide an excuse as to why they will not be able to vote on Election Day. Some of these states provide early in-person voting, which is nothing new. Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C., offer “no-excuse” absentee voting.

Voter Fraud Charges in New Jersey

On June 24, 2020, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office announced voter fraud charges against four individuals, including a city councilman and a councilman-elect. Paterson City Councilman Michael Jackson, Councilman-elect Alex Mendez and two other men are alleged to have exploited the mail-in voting process in the May 12 special election in Paterson, NJ. The investigation was opened when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service found hundreds of mail-in ballots stuffed in a single mailbox in Paterson and a number of additional ballots in a mailbox in Haledon.

Jackson, who represents the City’s First Ward and is the Vice President of the City Council, is alleged to have solicited voters to hand over their ballots and is alleged to have turned in ballots without being the authorization bearer to do so. Charges against him include election fraud, fraud in casting mail-in vote, unauthorized possession of ballots, false registration or transfer, tampering with public records and falsifying or tampering with records.