Los Angeles has some of the worst numbers for voting by mail, and registered voter who have chosen Permanent Vote by Mail. A poor PVM percentage tends to lead to a lower turnout. John Wildermouth of Fox & Hounds made a great case for Los Angeles shifting to a full vote by mail system.
"When the leading candidate for mayor, Eric Garcetti, collects the votes of fewer than 100,000 of the city’s 1.8 million registered voters, it’s not time for fiddling around the edges of voting rules. Go big or go home.
If Los Angeles really wants a truly representative election, the city needs to go 100 percent vote-by-mail. Right now.
It’s not that shocking an idea, really. More than half of California’s votes were cast by mail last November. For the lower turnout June primary, it was 65 percent.
Even in Los Angeles, which for a variety of historical reasons has one of the lowest percentages of permanent vote-by-mail voters in the state, more than 40 percent of those voting in last week’s election cast ballots by mail."
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2013/03/if-you-want-voters-time-to-try-mail-only/
Wildermouth is certainly correct that LA's history and relationship with voting by mail is a complicated one, however the current major source of resistance is Dean Logan, the Registrar for Los Angeles County.
Logan has repeatedly gone on the record stating his beliefs against voting by mail.
In the New York Times: 'Dean C. Logan, the registrar for Los Angeles
County, said the rate was partly a byproduct of the popularity of voting
by mail in California and partly a function of how the state defines
rejected ballots. Its definition includes ballots that voters requested
but that the Postal Service returned to election officials as
undeliverable.Voter behavior is changing and evolving,” Mr. Logan said. Young people
do not sign their names as consistently as older ones, he said, and mail
delivery is becoming less reliable.'
The county has the least money and policy invested into voting by mail,
consequently LA County has had the lowest vote by mail percentages in the state, and now an overall voter turnout that is lower than the state average (in both the 2012 general and 2013 primary elections). Pretty embarrassing for on of the largest and wealthiest counties in the state.
It is certainly true that we may me see an uptick in voter turnout now that Gruell and Garcetti are beginning to lay into each other a bit more and make this a more exciting campaign, but the fact remains that Los Angeles has a broken voting process. The state is rapidly moving toward a full vote by mail system (like that of Oregon). Logan's failure to keep pace has led to Los Angeles falling behind the state average in voter turnout.
I agree with you that vote-by-mail is a rather convenient system and that Los Angeles should try to get all of its voters to embrace it. Quite frankly, the idea of heading down to the poll to cast a vote seems archaic to me. Voters must go out of their way on a designated day to attend the polling station, and they are often crowded unless you go at a very random time during the day. I remember during the presidential election that people in Florida were waiting over two hours to cast their ballot. In the grand scheme of things, two hours for the right to vote is not the end of the world. We should be thankful that we are even able to cast a vote at all. However, society as a whole values time so much that a large segment of the population is not fine with waiting that long. Vote-by-mail allows voters to research as they vote and fill out ballots at their own convenience. As you have previously mentioned, voter turnout is alarmingly low, and this change seems like a rather simple way to increase engagement.
ReplyDelete