While some opponents believe all-mail elections open the door to voter fraud, academics and voting-rights advocates worry an all-mail statewide voting system would further disenfranchise young people, residents at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder and those whose native language is not English..
Every election, many ballots go uncounted, including those that are filled out incorrectly, missing valid signatures or simply mailed in too late. Research out of UC Davis shows that nearly 3percent of the vote-by-mail ballots received – or roughly 91,000 – in the June primary election were not counted. It was 1percent, or 69,000 ballots, in the 2012 general election.
“California has one of the highest uncounted mail-ballot counts in the nation,” said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation. “At a time when civic participation is in decline, I think it’s important to nurture the voting process as much as we can, which means operating polling places and keeping voting a visible, public act rather than something people only do in the privacy of their homes.”
Other experts doubt moving to all-mail would indeed speed up the counting process. Much of the lag time is attributable to the large number of ballots that pour into county elections offices in the final days and hours.