Surely there must be a way to speed up election results

By Jim Boren / The Fresno Bee

01/14/07 06:41:23

It's time to rethink the way we conduct elections in California . I'm all for making voting more convenient, but pushing more and more people to cast absentee ballots has a serious downside that could one day make some people question election results.

The recent long count in Fresno County's tight sheriff's race — it took 26 days to formally declare a winner — could become typical because absentee ballots take so long to tabulate. More than half of Fresno County 's voters now cast absentee ballots, and election officials expect that number to grow with every election.

That means the vote count will get slower and slower because absentee ballots require special handling and verification. It's easy to vote by absentee ballot. You can do it in your pajamas at the kitchen table and you can drop the ballot in the mail the next day on the way to work.

So what's the problem? My main concern is election night will become election month. We're headed in the wrong direction and no one seems to be questioning the system. A speedy vote count shouldn't be too much to ask of our elections officials.

Consider how elections are conducted. We're subjected to a long election campaign — more than a year in most cases — and then a drawn-out vote count. No wonder so many people are turned off to politics.

Waiting weeks for results

A time will come when only a handful of people will be going to a polling place to vote, with everyone else voting by mail. If nothing changes, we'll be waiting weeks to find out who won. And not just in the closest races, but all the races.

Then the conspiracy buffs will surface, claiming someone's been tampering with the election results, and suggesting that's the real reason that the count takes so long. I'm less concerned with black helicopters heading over the horizon with ballots than I am with not getting election results in a timely manner.

We live in an era of incredible technology, but our elections seem to be moving backward. Absentee ballots put the vote count in the hands of individual election workers instead of computers.

This is why it takes so long to process absentee ballots: Election workers compare signatures on the sealed envelopes containing absentee ballots against the signatures on the voter registration affidavits. If they match, the ballots are counted. If there are questions, the ballot envelopes are reviewed by a three-person panel, which makes the final determination.

No one is questioning whether elections officials are doing a good job in obtaining an accurate count. It's that their hands are tied by the cumbersome process. In an age of instantaneous communication, you'd think that counting votes would be faster.

Fresno County Clerk Victor Salazar said he's looking at ways to speed up the tabulation of absentee ballots. He plans on purchasing an electronic signature verification system and he wants to hire more temporary workers to help in the verification process.

Evan Goldberg, a spokesman for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, said the idea is to give voters as many options as possible to cast their ballots. They can vote early by mail, go to the polls on election day or even turn their absentee ballots in at the polls.

Officials don't see problem

But there is a price to pay for all that convenience, and it's a timely vote count.

Technology should be able to solve this problem. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of effort being put into figuring out how to improve the absentee ballot system. That's probably because elections officials don't see a slow count as a big problem.

They argue that the most important thing is that there is an accurate count of the votes and the results reflect the will of the voters. That obviously must happen. But having an accurate count shouldn't mean having to wait several weeks for results. Yet that's where we are headed with the increased popularity of absentee voting.

It's time for elections officials to figure out a way to speed up the vote count. Maybe they need to throw out the system of absentee ballots, and figure out a way of giving voters the ability to vote at home, but still be able to tabulate the results as quickly as votes cast at polling places.

They can do it. They just need to try.