Sam Reed Promotes Vote By Mail as the Solution to Problematic Voting Machines

Doing a little research over the weekend on Vote By Mail, I came across the pro-VBM website, called "The Vote By Mail Project".

Now, this website is interesting, it makes itself look like a homegrown Oregon based grassroots type organization. A bunch of voters in Oregon just got together and decided to support Vote-By Mail. Why just look at what their website copy says:

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"The Vote By Mail Project was launched in 2005 by a group of people in Oregon who looked around the country in 2000 and 2004 and realized just how well our Vote By Mail system works. No lines, no touch screen voting machines, no intimidation or voter suppression at the polls, a guaranteed paper trail, the nation’s highest turnout (87% in ’04) plenty of time for individual voters to make informed voting decisions, more convenient for working people and families with children, and voters love it."

"Across the country, an increasing number of cities, counties and states are making it easier for citizens to vote without standing in long lines or using potentially flawed electronic voting equipment. Whether by allowing no-excuse absentee balloting, enabling voters to permanently choose absentee balloting, or adopting vote by mail, election officials, particularly those in the West, are embracing this trend."


http://www.votebymailproject.org/

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Long lines, polling place intimidation and potentially flawed electronic voting equipment got you down, well we've got the answer.... Vote By Mail. Gosh we won't even need to train poll workers anymore.

So obviously, I want to know more about this organization, so I click around and find the advisers page....

The Advisers Page

Oddly the second name on the list Sam Reed is Washington's very own Secretary of State, Sam Reed.

I'm shocked. Isn't this the same Sam Reed that went around the state touting Electronic Voting Machines to kids in highschools?

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"We hope hands-on experience with touch screen machines will motivate students to get involved and actually prepare them to vote," said Reed. "Traditionally, young voters have not been represented well at the polls. They deserve a say in their future and they ought to exercise their rights to get it."

Yep it's still on the Washington State's SOS website

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So now which is it, are the voting machines faulty? Or are they the best thing since sliced bread? I hope someone besides me decides to ask Sam Reed this question.

And to everyone who thinks Touch Screen Voting Machines are the problem, why is it that the same people who bought the Touch Screens are now trying to sell you the cure?

This is pretty amazing to me considering Sam Reed is the President of NASS, the National Association of the Secretaries of State. Sam Reed is supporting a group that's attacking voting machines as faulty while simultaneously promoting the adoption of touch screen voting machine statewide and nationally.