Working on campaigns, we would never mail to inactive voters for a simple reason: they didn't vote. Apparently, that paradigm has shifted, if you listen to ProgressNow.
According to its latest rant, “…those so called 'inactive' voters weighed in — at the ballot box.” Well, not all of them. Actually, not even some of them weighed in. It was more like a few. Statewide, 94.5% of the ballots mailed to inactive voters ended up in the garbage. In Denver, 52,861 of the 54,136 ballots mailed to inactive voters, or 97.6%, never returned. Though nothing to get excited about, 52% of active Denver voters didn't feel like casting their ballots either. But at least taxpayers got a better rate of return for the active voters.
It seems odd to me that the liberal establishment at ProgressNow is patting itself on the back for a 5% return rate. How embarrassing? In 2009, when counties were required to mail to inactive voters, the rate of return was 3%. But this year, even with a statewide issue on the ballot, we got 5% of those ballots back. Hooray for us!
I read somewhere that Denver pays about $2 per mailed ballot. So, the cost to mail to the inactive voters was an extra $108,272 per election. Considering that Denver held three elections in 2011 between city elections and the November election, taxpayers forked over at least $325,000 in junk mail to these inactive voters.
Maybe this could be a selling point for Mayor Hancock's agenda to increase trash fees, since Denver's trash cans are weighted down with unvoted ballots.
is a diary that offers no proof of its allegations.
The regular suckers here will swallow it anyway, but critical thinkers will ask for your sources.
I agree sources are needed. But regardless, it’s been widely reported that Denver only saw 2.x% return on inactive ballots. At a time of drastic budget cuts, it seems an absurd amount of money to be wasting to be mailing ballots to people who don’t return them.
The three elections in Denver, if they didn’t automatically mail inactive voters, could have saved enough money to hire a few more teachers.
Do you not support education, Aristotle?
Inactive voters still had two weeks to vote, more than most voters in America, by going to their County Clerk’s office, or contacting the Clerk for a ballot.
It’s not unfair ballot access to only mail active voters. In the general we only mail people on the permanent absentee list — never heard anyone complain that’s an unfair advantage.
This isn’t an issue over waste and expense. It’s a battle over to what extent we encourage or discourage electoral participation, with positions being taken that, oh-so-coincidentally, correspond precisely to how that position affects electoral outcomes.
Democrats advocate more effort (and expenditure) to encourage broader participation, because broader participation favors the Democratic Party. Republicans advocate forgoing such effort and expenditure, because constricted electoral participation favors the Republican Party.
It’s a bad issue for you to defend, because you are arguing that we should avoid waste which encourages broader electoral participation, coincidentally arguing a position which favors you politically by further skewing electoral participation to be biased by over-representation of traditional elites and under-representation of minorities and the poor.
Conservatives bitterly complain when they are accused of being bigoted elitists who are trying to preserve a socially unjust status quo, but then turn around and act like bigoted elitists who are trying to preserve a socially unjust status quo. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words.
then distinguishing between registered voters in this manner shows that you don’t believe in our republic.
EVERY registered voter should be mailed a ballot. The expense is not germane to the discussion because voter access is one of the most basic services government must provide. Besides, aren’t they doing mail elections to save money already?
“Inactive” should be a high threshold to reach. Skipping one election is too low.
Nice straw man, by the way. Last time I checked, DPS wasn’t in charge of elections, so I doubt any money saved would be theirs to spend. But you’re intellectual bankrupt and someone who doesn’t believe in American equality before the law, so it’s what I expect.
Now, please emigrate. This country is too good for your likes.