Disenfranchised doyenne fumes at dark side of democracy

The U.S. is infamous for its low voter turnout. The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance ranks it 120th out of 169 voting countries, putting it behind such bastions of democracy as Bahrain, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s a commonly held belief that low voter turnout rates are due to apathy, and a widespread belief that “my vote doesn’t count.”

The former is true to some degree, particularly in this election. And the latter is also true, not only because some votes are weighted more than others, but also because a significant number of votes are not counted. The biggest issue of voter turnout is that American citizens are literally being disenfranchised.

This is the first presidential election that I can vote in, and I am keen to exert my right. So like a good citizen, I finished my voter registration for the state of Texas in September and mailed in my absentee ballot request almost three weeks before the election. It did not arrive until Monday, Nov. 5. Absentee ballots in Texas have to be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Well, there goes my vote.

I know that I’m not alone in this experience. As I stood in the Village A mail room on Saturday, Nov. 3 hoping to open my box and find my ballot, I was in the company of three other Georgetown students hoping to receive the same electoral packet. Out of the four of us, only one of us got the golden ticket.

Now, I would understand if Georgetown was in New Jersey or New York, and a number of students hadn’t received their ballots due to the devastation from Hurricane Sandy. For D.C., though, there is no excuse. Sure, we didn’t have mail service on the Monday or Tuesday before the election, but there is no reason for ballots not to have arrived by the weekend before the election. If the issue is slow mail, then ballots should be given priority mailing. Ensuring that citizens can vote should be the government’s primary concern.

There is evidence that the government may not necessarily be interested in everyone voting, what with the new voter ID laws, limited early voting in Florida, and Election Day not being a holiday. All of those allegations involve in-person voting; absentee is a separate issue.

Absentee ballots go through five stages: mailing in the ballot request, processing of the applications, sending out the ballot, receiving and filling in the ballot, and mailing the ballot in on time.

Let’s look at that process in real time: My absentee ballot request was mailed on Oct. 17 from my house in Texas, less than 10 miles away from the county election office. It took over five business days for this to be processed and mailed to me on Oct. 27. It then took six business days (four, minus Sandy) for the ballot to arrive on Nov. 5. The final one-and-a-half steps are now redundant.

The parts of the process attributed to the government took too long. There is no reason for it to take that many days to process an absentee ballot and send it, especially since Texas has implemented extended early voting so as to reduce the number of people applying for absentee ballots. There is also no reason for it to take that much time to arrive. The state and federal governments (the latter, in the case of the postal service) need to do a better job protecting a citizen’s right to vote and start prioritizing voting.

This is a pressing national issue. In 2008, 30 percent of votes were from absentee ballots. Of that 30 percent, it is estimated that one-fifth were not counted. That means that 6 percent of all ballots cast were not counted. No wonder people feel like their vote doesn’t count—for many, they don’t!

This issue needs to be addressed, and alternatives methods for absentee voting looked into. 30-plus states allow overseas and military voters to vote by email. New Jersey has extended this to absentee voting in the wake of Sandy’s destruction, while also requiring a paper ballot. More states need to look into instituting online voting for absentees, overseas or not. We live in the 21st century; if our president can have a secured BlackBerry then I think that we can figure out a way to have secure online voting.

In fact, why not let all voters vote online? More than three-fourths of the U.S. population uses the Internet. This will alleviate the issue of people who can’t get off work, the huge lines at polling stations, and people who “just don’t have the time.” Everyone with access to Internet has time to send an email.

If the U.S. really wants a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” then state governments and the federal government need to stop this history of disenfranchisement. Because, dammit, I want to rock the vote.