On November 6, 2007, municipalities throughout the great US state of Minnesota will hold local elections for offices such as mayor, city council, and school board. These are relatively minor affairs (so long as you don’t care about street lights and education policy), and nobody outside of Minnesota is going to pay much attention to them. However, like local elections elsewhere in the United States, they are an important test of voting technologies and procedures that will be used next year when American voters choose their next president.
Yesterday, October 14, I received my absentee ballot for the November 6 elections to be held in Minnesota. That leaves exactly 23 days for the ballot to be voted and conveyed back to the United States via two postal services.
Bluntly: twenty-three days is not nearly enough time if Minnesota, Hennepin County, St. Louis Park, and other governmental units in Minnesota – and elsewhere in the United States – are really serious about receiving and counting the votes of overseas Americans on-time. In my experience, postal service between China and the United States takes between 10 days and two weeks (longer, if mailing from a secondary or tertiary city). But I’ve traveled enough to know that postal service between the United States and other Asian countries is much slower. That is to say, I may have received my ballot – in Shanghai – on the 14th. But other Minnesota, in other countries, are likely to receive their ballots much later — and much less likely to have them counted.
This is not a trivial issue: in 2000, late-arriving absentee ballots from overseas US military personnel played a key role in George Bush’s victory in the contested Florida elections (and, in the eyes of many, de-legitimizing the victory). According to a recent US federal government survey, there are still serious deficiencies in the US overseas absentee balloting system, including undeliverable ballots and high rates of disqualified returned ballots.
How bad is the system in advance of 2008? Well, according to a 2004 article in the New York Times, US election experts generally believe that overseas absentee ballos should be sent by September 19 to ensure that they can be returned on-time. The fact that my ballot arrived on October 14 strongly suggests that Minnesota”s Hennepin County (the jurisdiction charged with overseeing the election in question) missed this deadline by at least a week to ten days. Given that, is there any reason to believe that the Hennepin County and Minnesota (and other states!) will be able to meet a deadline in 2008 – when requests for ballots will be much higher, and when a late primary election will make printing – and thus delivering – the ballots much more difficult? I’m not holding my breath.
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In a few minutes I will mail my ballot – and a birthday card for my grandmother – from China Post. As it happens, my grandmother’s birthday is just a few days in advance of election day AND she just so happens to live a few blocks from where my ballot is to be delivered (St. Louis Park City Hall). So, as I figure it: if she gets her birthday card on-time, my ballot was on-time and counted. Keep reading Shanghai Scrap for a late-breaking updates.
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[UPDATE 10/16: An employee of the Hennepin County Elections Division emailed to explain that – by Minnesota law – absentee balloting begins 30 days before a general election, and that all overseas ballots were mailed within 24 hours of that date – which, in this case, was October 5. Clearly, that is not nearly enough time for ballots to be received and returned by election day – but, in this case, there’s no blaming Hennepin County. It sounds like their hands are tied. So, until Minnesota’s legislature and governor (who, it just so happens, will visit Shanghai on Friday) get around to fixing this situation, overseas Minnesotans are left with only one alternative:
Now that you know how long it takes mail to reach you in China, you may wish to send us [Hennepin County’s Election Division] prepaid express postal delivery service envelopes prior to the 2007 primary and general election.]
Adam, glad to see that you speak out, and not give up. American overseas voters are awakening as a real force. Note the number of presidential candidates courting us now; quite a change from when I first became involved with issues related to overseas Americans in 1992. In the latest e-newsletter of American Citizens Abroad (www.aca.ch), I suggest that one can galvanize your hometown election office by phoning (or writing, of course) to ensure that your votes have been counted. When I phoned myself to check, my county elections office in southern Indiana gave me an answer in less than two minutes – and it would have been faster but for my complicated last name. Thanks for the Shanghai Scrap site – interesting. Regards.