Bungled ballots.

In his review of my book, Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America, Phil Keisling ("Early and Often," October/November) suggests there is a simple catch-all solution to the problems of electoral malfeasance and mismanagement: voting by mail (VBM). That is the system he introduced in Oregon when he was Secretary of State there, so it's understandable he should feel proud, even a little defensive, of his achievement.

Unfortunately, his reasoning falls right into what, in the book, I term the fallacy of the technological fix. For the past century, reformers have fantasized that if only they could come up with the right mechanism for voting, all the problems associated with elections would magically go away. The punch-card voting machine, which became the butt of jokes in the wake of the 2000 presidential debacle in Florida and a byword for electoral dysfunction, was hailed as just such a miracle machine in the early 1960s. So, too, were the computer touch-screen machines brought in to replace punch cards in Florida's aftermath that are now viewed with suspicion by many leading computer scientists and the General Accounting Office.

The fallacious thinking in all cases is that it is the voting mechanism that needs to be fixed, when in fact it is America's political culture that is principally to blame. I'm willing to believe voting by mail can work in a state like Oregon, which has a relatively small, relatively stable population and a fair-minded political culture.

In Florida, though, things look very different. The fluidity of the population makes balloting by mail hard to organize even under honest management; often people in certain political target areas (like Democrat-leaning Little Haiti in Miami) have complained that their absentee ballot applications have been mishandled or gone unprocessed altogether. A mayoral election in Miami in 1997 was overturned after the courts found evidence of wide-scale fraud involving mail-in ballots--ballots with very similar security safeguards used in Keisline's Oregon. In Palm Beach County in 2004, the electoral authorities decided mail-in envelopes should have the party registration of the individual voter printed on the front-an open invitation to malicious intervention by anyone from the mailman to a partisan poll worker.

Given the shenanigans we saw in several states in both 2000 and 2004, there is no reason to suppose an all-mail system would be any less subject to abuse. Who's to say that political operatives in a battleground state wouldn't simply steal absentee ballots out of people's mailboxes in areas known to lean heavily to the other party? Doesn't vote-by-mail make it easier for parties to pay people for their votes? Such things have happened in the past, and can easily happen again.

Whatever mail-in voting is, it is far from ideal. It also raises serious constitutional questions. The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out every last mail-in ballot in the 1997 Miami fraud case, arguing that absentee voting was a "privilege," not a right. That's an unsettling precedent, one that a Supreme Court dominated by Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and--perhaps--Alito is unlikely to undo any time soon.

Andrew Gumbel

Los Angeles, Calif.

Phil Keisling responds:

I never claimed that voting by mail would make elections fraud-proof and problem-free. I did express dismay that Gumbel's only mention of this proven reform was a backhanded reference to 36,000 allegedly fraudulent ballots in Oregon's 2000 vote-by-mail election--a phony statistic he should recant, but still hasn't.

All election systems can and must use technology. And I endorsed Gumbel's conclusion: Touch-screen, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines reflect an all-too-common stampede to apply a relatively untested, "latest and greatest" technology to voting.

However, he apparently missed my point about the 18th (not 21st) century nature of vote by mail "technology." The rush to embrace DREs is not dissimilar to the "too cheap to meter" rush to build nuclear power plants. Energy conservation--caulking windows, improving motors, and insulating walls--is ordinary and familiar stuff

Yet after Chernobyl, nuclear power apologists urged new and expensive fixes--just as many (including Gumbel) ignore VBM's benefits, and now endorse expensive, complicated changes to make the fundamentally flawed D RE "even better" by creating paper receipts.

Oregonians like compliments as well as anyone, but we're no "electoral Shangri-La." In the last 20 years, we've had massive election fraud by a religious cult, the resignation of a U.S. senator, and the recent imprisonment of a powerful state legislator for campaign finance fraud. And like Florida, our citizens move around a lot, too (in one study, 20 percent in a four-year cycle). We have a large and burgeoning immigrant population-from second-home owners (not everyone wants to retire to Florida) to people from Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

That many states, including Florida, have flaws in a whole range of election processes simply "proves" the importance of paying attention and making changes accordingly. Oregon verifies every signature on a mailed-in ballot against the voting registration card--a safeguard that still doesn't exist in many states (all of which use absentee ballots). Oregon no longer prints party registration on general election ballots; it serves no useful purpose.

Opponents in our state also parrot Gumbel's speculation about possible spousal coercion, stealing from mail boxes, and faked signatures, etc., without tangible evidence. It's not that these scenarios are impossible. But basic safeguards, reporting mechanisms, felony-level penalties, and the watchful eyes of fierce partisans--yes, Oregon has them, too!--make this system work. Our 85 percent turnout of registered voters in November 2004 speaks volumes.

Cynics are adept at making the "perfect" the enemy of the good--not to mention the "much better." I hope Gumbel isn't a cynic, and personally invite him to visit Oregon to see for himself. He'll find many (including me) who agree that changes in our political culture are also important. He may still remain a vote-by-mail skeptic. But I think he'll find that Oregon is less different than he imagines--except in being more able to make elections work.