Overhaul needed

Back in late September, just as the municipal election campaign was getting underway, almost 57 percent of the 141 respondents to the Times’ weekly web poll said they supported the mail-in ballot system.
But in the wake of all the rejected ballots and other problems encountered with the mail-in system in the days leading up to last Monday’s election, only about 48 percent of the 220 respondents to this past week’s web poll said they would like to see it used again in the next election.
Clearly the tide has shifted.
The mail-in ballot system has its benefits, to be sure. It boosts voter turnout, it’s more convenient than the old-fashioned method of having to set up polls all over town, and it certainly speeds up the counting process on election night.
On the downside, though, almost one-in-five ballots were being rejected in the final week leading up to the election because voters hadn’t followed the instructions properly (most notably failing to sign and enclose the voter declaration form)—a number that potentially could have skewered the election results.
That’s no fault of the Civic Centre staff. And to its credit, the town allowed people to re-vote if they had done so incorrectly in the first place. Trouble is, who knows how many of them changed their minds and voted for different candidates the second time around?
But most disturbing about the mail-in system is the potential for voter fraud. Ballots were being sent to the wrong addresses, to people who had died or moved away, and to students currently living out of town to attend college or university.
Hopefully no one forged signatures and voted more than once, but the point is it could have happened. And if even one person did so, that was one person too many.
The integrity of an election trumps any benefit the mail-in ballot system may have. The town either should abandon it in 2010, or beef up measures to ensure the one-person, one-vote principle remains inviolable.