Simitian Proposes Postage-Paid Vote-by-Mail

PRESS RELEASE

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors today considered a proposal by Supervisor Joe Simitian to make voting in all Santa Clara County elections (local, state and national) postage-paid (i.e., cost-free to the public).

Simitian noted that, “While the cost to individual voters is probably negligible in most cases, it just strikes me as fundamentally inappropriate to impose a cost, however modest, to exercise the right to vote.”

Simitian noted that postage for a lengthy ballot is now up to 91 cents, and “while most people probably wouldn’t react that badly if you asked them how they felt about paying postage on their vote-by-mail ballot, I think if you asked most voters whether it was appropriate to charge them a buck to cast their vote, they would find it fundamentally inappropriate.”

Simitian said the use of postage-paid envelopes had the potential to:

• Increase voter participation;
• Reduce the number of vote-by-mail ballots that are returned to a polling place on election day, which have proven particularly challenging for the Registrar of Voters to handle; and,
• Reduce the potential for voter confusion by establishing a simple and uniform policy of postage-paid vote-by-mail ballots. Under the current policy, some vote-by-mail ballots are postage-paid; some are not. And if the envelope does require postage, the voter has to determine what level of postage is required.
   

That such confusion exists is evidenced by the fact that our Registrar of Voters is currently picking up unpaid postage of approximately $22,600 annually on ballots cast by voters who either miscalculated the postage required or simply didn’t realize that postage was required.

The cost associated with Simitian’s proposal is relatively modest.  The Registrar of Voters estimates the cost for fiscal 2016 to be $198,000, minus $56,000 in reimbursements from local jurisdictions and minus the $22,600 cost currently incurred in covering unpaid postage.

Simitian noted that, “While the amount is not inconsequential, it seems modest when we are considered a fundamental right like the right to vote; and when we consider that 70% of our county’s voters are now vote-by-mail as a result of the Registrar’s aggressive and effective effort to increase vote-by-mail voting.”

Supervisors had a number of questions for Registrar Shannon Bushey, and agreed to revisit the issue next month.

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