For last Fall’s election, the City and Borough of Juneau, like other municipalities around the country, went to a strictly mail-in election. For the October election, 27,629 ballots were mailed out to voters. 8,517 ballots were ultimately counted. But there were also about 300 ballots that were not counted because they lacked a postmark.
Officially, the U.S. Postal Service declares at its website that “The Postal Service’s policy is to postmark all ballots mailed by voters, whether they are prepaid by election officials or mailed with a stamp affixed by the voter.” The Postal Service has adopted a special logo or image that identifies election ballots. The Juneau ballot envelopes all had this image. Yet in this election, some 300 mail-in ballots were not counted because they did not have a postmark. In this election, those 300 ballots would not have made a difference, but this number, which is also 3.5 % of the vote, was large enough to cause the city clerk to investigate to see how it might be prevented in the future. But alas.
It took well over a month of persistent effort just to get a meeting with a local official of the post office, and when she did, she was told that the postal service here did not have the type of equipment that would postmark business reply mail, nor did they anticipate obtaining that equipment any time soon. Not reassuring. Yet even that is not the full story as the city clerk advises that there were many ballots mailed from Juneau that did have postmarks. She also advises that they received ballots with and without postmarks that were mailed from outside of Juneau.
So what does this mean?
It means that we cannot count on the post office, and as long as that is the case, mail-in elections will themselves be unreliable. Mail-in elections rely on a system that is unreliable. It is strictly a hit and miss thing as to whether any given ballot will get a postmark. Close elections will be decided by chance. This appears to be the case both here, statewide and nationwide. Perhaps mail-in elections are not a panacea after all.
• Ray Preston resides in Juneau. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.
