[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 38 (Tuesday, March 19, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2335-S2336]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           MAIL BALLOT VOTING

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I suppose there is no columnist 
whose writings I read, and with whom I agree more consistently, than 
Carl Rowan.
  And his recent column about the mail voting experiment in Oregon is 
no exception.
  Every move forward to enlarging the voter franchise has been 
resisted. That includes giving voting rights to African-Americans, 
native Americans and to American women.
  And the secret ballot which we prize so much today was not part of 
our early history.
  We have gradually made improvements, despite the objections of many 
people who were wedded to the status-quo.
  I do not suggest that on the basis of the Oregon experiment, we 
should nationally move to mail voting yet, but I would like to see 
several States try it, because my instinct is that it is likely to be 
an improvement over the present system.
  I ask that the Carl Rowan column be printed in the Record.
  The column follows:

            A Knock at Mail Ballots Is a Knock at Democracy

                            (By Carl Rowan)

       The political mentalities of the 1770s and 1950s are 
     bursting out all over now that Oregon has had a successful 
     mail ballot to fill the seat of disgraced Sen. Bob Packwood.
       I hear cries that the mail ballot cheapened the election, 
     robbing the vote of the sacred majesty that the framers of 
     our government intended.
       I hear complaints that the mail ballot permitted uneducated 
     people ``who don't even know the names of their congressmen'' 
     to vote.
       We're told that it allowed all people to vote without 
     expending the small amount of energy and sacrifice of going 
     to a neighborhood polling place, undermining the notion that 
     ``the vote is a precious thing.''
       This is swallowed by some as the sentimentality of 
     patriotism, but it is, in fact, undemocratic gibberish that 
     ought not override the fact that the Oregon election lifted 
     the percentage of voters to about 65 percent of those 
     eligible, a figure that made democratic participation almost 
     as high as in European countries. It saved Oregon about $1 
     million. And it produced results that any Republican could 
     applaud.
       So we are to deplore this election as a violation of what 
     ``the framers'' intended? I remember that the framers counted 
     black citizens as three-fifths of a vote. And women as zero 
     percent of a vote. Naturally, neither I nor my wife is much 
     impressed by a reminder of what the framers believed about 
     the semi-slave status of African-American males, or women.
       The framers created a situation under which many states 
     could decree that only the propertied could vote. When that 
     idea and ``poll tax'' requirements were beaten down, polling 
     places were located where millions of poor, ill minority 
     citizens could not get to because they lacked transportation 
     or couldn't leave their jobs.
       Nothing in a neighborhood polling place could be more 
     sacred to deprived citizens than casting their first ballot--
     primarily because the mail ballot allowed them to do so.
       So spare me this balderdash about how this country must 
     return to a respect for what ``the framers'' intended!
       I find especially offensive the complaints that mail 
     ballots were cast by ``uninformed, uneducated'' citizens. In 
     the 1950s some states had laws requiring ``literacy tests'' 
     for those seeking to vote. That was implemented in ways where 
     white registrars could deny the ballot to blacks who couldn't 
     answer ``correctly'' such questions as ``How many bubbles in 
     a bar of soap?''
       Everyone I've heard deploring the mail ballot would be 
     incensed if anyone accused

[[Page S2336]]

     them of harboring the racist and sexist views of the framers. 
     Yet they peddle those views almost mindlessly.
       We either treasure democracy or we don't. If we do, the 
     more of it the better. So I say of the Motor Voter law and 
     mail ballot: ``Welcome and hooray!''

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