Political scientist Corey Robin has this article at Politico. It says that in the U.S., employers sometimes coerce their employees into engaging in political action that supports politicians that the employer backs.
The article does not mention all-postal balloting. One fear that has been expressed by other writers is that if every voter votes by mail, there is less protection against coercion in voting. If the ballot is received in the mail, then the individual who is exerting coercion or other undue influence (such as bribery) has a chance to watch the voter mark the ballot before it is mailed back.
There is a simple way of addressing the issue Richard raises of potential coercion or bribery in vote-by-mail balloting due to the coercer/briber checking the voted ballot before it is submitted. Change the ballot processing procedures so that if more than one ballot is submitted by a voter, the last one is counted instead of the first one. That way, the coercer/briber can’t be sure that the verified “correct” ballot is the one that counts, unless the voter is monitored from the time the ballot is checked and mailed until the polls are closed. (Also, if a vote-by-mail ballot is submitted and the voter also goes to the polls, instead of casting a provisional ballot that will be ignored in favor of the vote-by-mail ballot, the voter casts an ordinary ballot and his or her vote-by-mail ballot is ignored.)
Doing this would require changes to state election law in California (and probably in other states), but is already partly done in some early voting situations in Santa Clara County (and probably some other counties). If a voter comes in to an early voting site who has been sent a vote-by-mail ballot, they check whether that ballot has already been received and opened, and if it hasn’t, the voter is allowed to early vote and the vote-by-mail ballot is voided (so that it will be discarded if it is later received in the mail, or if it had been previously received but not yet processed). This at least allows a secret ballot cast at an early voting site to take precedence over a possibly non-secret vote-by-mail ballot that had been sent earlier.
To give credit where it is due, I first came across this idea in a December 2013 post here on Ballot Access News, about an internet voting pilot project in Norway.
I have been advocating the “last vote counts” system for Oregon’s vote-by-mail system for years.
Today, a voter can legitimately request a second ballot, only if the first ballot has been lost, destroyed, or mutilated in a way that will prevent it from being counted by the scanners. This locks early voters into their early choices, which can be made up to 17 days before election day. If a voter has already sent in her ballot and then claims it was lost or destroyed and casts a second ballot, it is the first ballot that counts.
My proposal has been that anyone can request a second ballot, for any reason, and casting it would override that person’s earlier vote. This is practical, because each ballot has a unique bar-coded identifier that links it to the identity of the voter. When the voter goes to the county election office, shows valid ID, and requests a second ballot, it gets a ballot with a new bar code that also links to the voter’s ID.
This “last vote counts” system would be a safeguard against a type of voter fraud that is possible with vote-by-mail. Say an unscrupulous employer says to her workers, “All of you sign your voter return envelopes and give me your ballots. If you tell anyone about this, you are fired.” The employer could then fill out the ballots, insert them into the pre-signed return envelopes, and mail them in. Say then a concerned worker goes to the county elections office and asks for a second ballot. He can get one, only if he says the first ballot was lost. Say he does so and votes the second ballot. Then, when the system sees that 2 ballots were cast by the same person, it cancels the second one, thus leaving the employer’s voting fraud scheme intact.
If the second ballot were the one that counted, the worker could thwart the employer’s fraud by going to the county elections office, showing valid ID, getting a second ballot and casting it. This would also allow voters to change their votes, based upon events during the last 17 days before the election.
You may ask why we should not rely on the worker to report the fraud. That would require substantial courage on the part of a worker who needs the job. Also, there would be no documentary evidence of the fraud, unless all of the marks (usually the filling in of ovals) on the ballots looked the same and were made with the same type of pen. But the employer could avoid that sort of evidence by using different pens and marking styles.
Oregon prohibits changing an early vote except when the original ballot is lost, destroyed, or mutilated and in fact has not already been mailed in. If it has already been mailed in and is machine-readable, it counts and cannot be changed. There are no walk-in polls in Oregon, so early votes cannot be changed “at the polls.”
But I think Oregon should change its rules so that anyone can request and vote a second ballot, with only the second ballot counting. The existing technology allows that. And it should not be necessary for the voter to make a trip to the county elections office. Since the first ballot was simply mailed to the voter’s registered address, the second ballot could be mailed there also. This would also tend to discourage the type of hypothetical voter fraud I described above. Each employer would know that, even if she collects, fills out, and votes the ballots of her workers, each of them can easily (and in secret) request and cast a second ballot that would override the first one.