This Time it Affects Absentee Voters

SACRAMENTO -- "As our Chief Elections Officer, the Secretary of State, should be a leader in developing contingency plans for everything that could possibly go wrong in an election. Instead, days after thousands of absentee ballots have been sent out across the state, McPherson is now trying to figure out how to let absentee voters know that they may need extra postage to mail in their ballots."

That's how Senator Debra Bowen, the chairwoman of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee and the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State,responded to the news that many counties will require voters to pay 63 cents -- or in at least onecase, 87 cents -- to return their absentee ballot, yet many absentee voters may not be aware of thechange.

"The Secretary of State knew the state portion of the ballot was unusually long for this election,so counties with a large number of local measures on their ballot would have to require theirvoters to use extra postage to get their ballot back to the county on time," continued Bowen. "Adetailed plan to let absentee voters know about the increased postage rates should have beendeveloped two months ago when the November ballot was finalized. Instead counties arescrambling to make deals with the post office to deliver ballots that don't have sufficient postageon them and are sending out additional mail, all wasting valuable tax dollars."

County registrars of voters began mailing out hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots this week, primarily to people who are registered as "permanent absentee voters." In the June 2006 primary election, more than 2.4 million Californians voted by absentee ballot and that number is expected to significantly increase in November's general election. At least 15 counties -- Alameda, Amador, Contra Costa, Glenn, Imperial, Kern, Merced, Monterey, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Ventura, and Yuba -- are requiring extra postage on all returned absentee ballots. While most counties have attempted to alert voters to the extra postage requirement by putting it in the absentee ballot instructions or directly on the return envelope itself, at least one county -- Riverside -- failed to inform approximately 70,000 absentee ballot voters that it will cost 63 cents to return the ballot.

"This is just the latest example of the Secretary's inability to show any leadership when it comes to making sure eligible Californians can register to vote, can cast a ballot, and can have that ballot counted accurately," added Bowen.

"He made a deal with the Bush Administration to adopt a statewide voter registration database system that prevented 26,000 eligible Californians from registering to vote in the June primary in Los Angeles County alone and he didn't change his system until a federal court found a nearly identical set-up violated federal law and the Constitution. In the June primary, problems with Kern County's Diebold voting machines forced polls to open hours late and prevented as many as 500 people from casting a ballot. Despite that disaster, the Secretary still hasn't developed a contingency plan in the event these machines go down again in the general election."

Several county elections officials have said they've made arrangements with their local U.S. Post Office officials to ensure ballots with insufficient postage will be delivered to the county and the county will simply pick up the tab for the shortfall.

"I applaud the counties who have been pro-active in terms of letting voters know about the extra postage requirements and setting up a back-up plan with their local post office to make sure voter's ballots are delivered, but it never should have come to this," concluded Bowen. "The Secretary of State should be anticipating these types of problems and solving them before they become an issue, instead of laying it all at the feet of the country registrars of voters and forcing them to scramble for a solution less than a month before the election."