Counting the Vote: The Most Obvious Solution

[Occulus]

By now, some of you may know that I'm a postal employee. While I would, admittedly, like to go to work in another field (in computer animation for film and television, no less), I'm still somewhat proud of the fact that I am part of a system that helps this country function. If the postal system were to halt tomorrow, our nation's economy and business dealings, as well as (obviously) our written communications, would grind to a halt. Postal employees hold collectively within our hands a very great deal of power- quite honestly, power to bring this nation to its knees, were we to fully exercise that power.

We are not about that.

Above all other points of pride, postal employees hold dear to their hearts the concept of free speech. We ensure and enshrine this concept each and every minute of every day. Free, open, honest, and confidential communication is the hallmark of our purpose, the mark of our (lowly) station, and we go to great lengths to ensure the security and integrity of our mail system. As I said in a previous diary, you pay, you play. It really is just that simple.

We care not one fig for the content of your speech. We do not care- at all- that your political views differ from ours. We WILL sort your mailings, accurately, quickly, and without interference. This is our job, and we all- every last one of us- take great pride in the fact that we, and we alone, absolutely guarantee that your speech WILL NOT be interfered with in any way, at all, period.

That is our job, and we do that job more effectively, and cheaper, than any other mail system on the planet.

You already trust us to do that job, and you do so each and every day. Your bills, your college and high school transcripts, your resumes- EVERYTHING you mail will, and I mean will, get to its destination. YES, there are incidents in which mail gets delayed. YES, mail sometimes gets stuck in or under a machine and we find it later and gape at the postmark date- horrified at the fact that we failed that ONE piece of mail. VERY occasionally, the piece CANNOT be delivered, and is wasted, but that's pretty damn rare when you consider the volume of mail we handle daily.

The sole job of the USPS is to quickly and accurately sort the mail- all of it- without exception or bias of ANY kind. Our jobs depend upon this, to the point that the Postal Inspection Service has the authority of law enforcement. These people carry GUNS, to ensure that your freedom of speech is not compromised, EVER- and woe to those who try to subvert our system.

All this is a preamble to a very obvious question. Our voting system is, nationally, in shambles. Voting irregularities void ballots across the nation in each election. The voter rolls are subject to myriad laws across various states, each of which has its own criteria as to which votes should be counted, what voters should be purged, and how, and so on.

My solution is simple: why shouldn't we put the USPS in charge of counting the votes?

We already have machines you and I trust daily to sort your mail, and there's no reason at all why these same machines cannot be trusted to count your votes. We touch your lives on a daily basis, and the machinery we use could very, very easily be modified to count votes on, say, a 3" x 5" card; such pieces are INCREDIBLY well-suited to our equipment. Just set up a voting machine that prints the vote on a card, and let us have at it. We can have the votes in a nationwide election counted in HOURS.

This isn't fantasy. In TWO HOURS last night, myself and my coworker sorted over 40,000 pieces of mail- all disparate pieces, cards, letters, bills, absentee ballots, and so on. If you multiply that by twelve identical machines- which is what we have in our plant- the entire vote of the state of Michigan could be counted in one or two eight hour shifts, if the ballots are suited to the sorting machines.

Now apply that speed and accuracy to the entire country. You can certainly see what I'm getting at.

The cards I'm proposing are ideal for our equipment. They feed though the machines quickly, and with remarkably FEW jams in the machine. Even when they do get mangled (as does, on occasion, happen), they're still completely readable, and not "spoiled" at all. We automation clerks actually seek out such cards, to give us a rest break while we're sorting our mail. They're easy to run through the equipment, and they sort very, VERY well.

Our sorting machines sort such cards easily. It's simplicity itself.

So why don't we create a voting machine that prints a 3x5 card ballot result for each candidate, to be fed into postal machinery? This is a solution to the voting problem I've never once seen even proposed, anywhere, in any discussion of the topic. Why is that? We already trust the USPS to handle things important to us on a DAILY basis; SURELY, our vote is just as important as- no, more important than- our bills or our letters to Grandma. In addition, the entire nation, without exception, trusts the USPS to handle mailings quickly, accurately, and in a nonpartisan manner, and on a daily basis.

Yet for some reason, nobody, and I mean nobody, ever, has proposed that the USPS be in charge of counting the vote!

It's the most obvious solution there is to the issue of counting the vote, and as a postal worker, I'm somewhat shamed that I didn't see that solution sooner. So here, then, are some proposed details of my solution.

Each voter could cast their ballot on a machine similar to the electronic voting machines some areas use today, but constructed and maintained by the USPS. Access and monitoring of the equipment could be handles by the Postal Inspection Service. Each machine would do three things: allow the voter to cast their ballot by touchscreen, record and store on a 3x5 card each candidate choice, individually, that the voter selects, and print a comprehensive, complete list of the voter's choices, to be held by the voter in case they wish to confirm- at will- that their vote was counted.

At the time of the finalization of the voters' choices, a single card would be printed, containing a random number corresponding internally to the voter's ballot as it appears onscreen. The vote would not be cast officially until the voter confirms that the names onscreen actually correspond to their vote; at the time of confirmation, a 3x5 card would be printed showing ALL that voter's choices, cumulatively, and the random number.

Internally to the voting machine, each choice would be printed, all together, on a 3x5 card, with the voter's random number assigned to that ballot. The random number would be used ONLY for verification that that voter's ballot had been counted in the official tally, should that become necessary. The voter's name would not be coupled with this number. Each candidate vote cast would be printed on another, individual 3x5 card (for a total of two cardstocks per machine); these individual candidate cards would be fed into a machine similar to a Delivery BarCode Sorter, or DBCS- one of the machines that sorts your mail on a daily basis.

The sortplan for these machines would be assembled by postal in-plant support using a list provided by the BOE and confirmed by the candidates. That sortplan would then be sent to both the BOE AND the media to ensure that all candidates appear in the sortplan; the public would see this sortplan before any vote was counted. After confirmation, that sortplan would be loaded into the machine, and the candidate cards would be sorted in the exact same way your mail is sorted.

These machines keep stats as a matter of course: how many went into which bin is the only statistic one would need to count the votes. Due to the speed and the uniform nature of the ballots, the entire vote count could be attained within hours of the closing of the polls, and with a minimal error rate- an error rate identically small to the sort error rate of your daily mail (and again, this is a very small percentage of all items sorted). Errors would be hand sorted and the counts of all bins confirmed, just like we already do with letters that our machines can't sort for one reason or another.

This solution is blindingly obvious. It therefore comes as no surprise that it has never once been proposed, in any forum that I am aware of, and in no discussion I'm aware of. Forest, for the trees.

Postal employees are uniquely qualified to count our votes as no other group of people are, and the trust in this system is already very well established. We are not partisan, at all, period. Under this system, your vote WILL be counted, and with the random confirmation number I mentioned, you could simply go to your postmaster to confirm that your vote was indeed counted. In the event of a hand recount, you would have a slip showing your vote, and a number to isolate that vote so nobody else could claim it.

The system I'm proposing is already fair to all, because we already use it impartially. We use this same sort of system minute by minute, every hour of every day. There is NO reason under the sun why postal employees should NOT b given the trust of counting our vote. We are, quite honestly, the only nonpartisan communication system in this country, and I can guarantee you that, under such a system, we will count your vote fairly, honestly, and accurately.

The fact that we already provide such a trust is nothing more than the strongest possible reason why we should be counting the vote as well as the normal, everyday mail. You, everyone reading, already trust us on a daily basis, and with good reason.

I can personally guarantee that, under this system, the vote would be counted quickly, fairly, and accurately. After all- it could be MY vote I'm sorting, and I would treat every ballot as if it WERE mine. I know my coworkers would do the same. That's our job as things already stand, and I would be damn PROUD to extend that job to the vote itself.

We, the People, deserve nothing less.

[yellerpup]

1. I'd nominate you for a Cabinet post.

Love, love, love your critical thinking skills. Too bad there isn't one for animation so I could send you where you want to be.

[sce56]

2. Sorry but not all post offices are equal

two weeks ago I received my absentee ballot from my sister she put it in a large envelope with more than a dollars worth of stamps on it and sent it to me I had just moved that month almost two hundred miles away to start a new job the envelope was postmarked May 10, 06 I received it two weeks ago! When I was living in Okinawa I sent home for christmas packages to Md,Wi and several to Ca, all were sent with in the guidelines for christmas delivery by priority mail every one got theres in time for xmas except my sister! Hers got there in February! The Ventura county postal service area is really bad!
How about we just do ballots where you select the issues on screen it prints out a regular 8.5 x 11" paper of your vote then it is deposited in a locked box after the election a random and I do mean random sample 15% of all the boxes is audited to see if the machines were accurate! The selection of the sample is not made until after the vote so no one can rig it so the sample match.



October 17, 2006,Will be remembered as the Enabling day of the 21st Century!
"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures..."
~Adolf Hitler, March 23, 1933, before the German Parliament (Reichstag) as he urged them to pass his "Enabling Act"


Got Fascism Yet?

[PATRICK]

5. Tracking

You can add bar-code tracking to any mail for a small small charge. You can track where it gets scanned and when online. That is not infallible either but you can see where to call and if it is getting proper treatment and can call the PO instead of sweating it out. Certified does the same but is costlier and can slow things with more manual setting aside and special treatment(which is why lawyers love them I presume and many lawyers seem to screw the zipcode to further slow down actual reception). Priority(use LARGE envelope) also gets better faster handling, but always include tracking.

Of course make sure your mail gets a postmark, preferably right at the counter. Using the USPS as a voting system is even better since political cronyism has vanished from the workplace as a system. The BIG advantage that can utilized is that it is the most trustworthy if not the ONLY person to person network covering the entire USA- DAILY. We are not allowed to personally campaign on duty but I am always
curious as to the effectiveness of volunteer lit drops that can't possibly match the reach of the mail.
Many of the best canvassers of course are letter carriers organized by their union- of duty. My Dad swung elections with such a corps and we still man phones and shed shoe leather in all local races.

[dmr4567]

3. Looks like you have given this a lot of thought

it should be looked into I for one trust the Post Office

[eppur_se_muova]

4. And if the results didn't match the exit polls -- there would be an UPROAR

because everyone knows the Postmaster General is a political apointee, and would be quick to assume chicanery was involved. For some reason, people don't hold the same mistrust of private companies that they do of gov't, even when the companies are blatantly partisan.

I like the idea, overall. I hope it gets more discussion.