On Fri­day, I received a rou­tine let­ter from King Coun­ty Elec­tions request­ing that I com­plete a form to update my sig­na­ture for their records, to min­i­mize the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there will be any issues ver­i­fy­ing my bal­lot in future elections.

While my sig­na­ture was not chal­lenged in the Novem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, it has been over ten years since I reg­is­tered to vote, so I was­n’t too sur­prised to be asked to update it. As King Coun­ty Elec­tions notes:

Sig­na­tures may change for many rea­sons, such as a name change, the pas­sage of time, phys­i­cal changes or sim­ply chang­ing the way you sign your name. Each elec­tion we com­pare the sig­na­ture on your return bal­lot enve­lope to the sig­na­ture from your vot­er reg­is­tra­tion file. A bal­lot may only be count­ed if we can find a match between these two signatures.

Empha­sis is mine.

I prompt­ly filled out the form and went to put it in the pro­vid­ed return enve­lope. Out of habit, I was on the verge of peel­ing off a stamp to put on the enve­lope when I noticed some­thing: the postage had already been prepaid!

See for yourself:

King Coun­ty Elec­tions is using Busi­ness Reply Mail to ensure that vot­ers don’t need a stamp in order to return their sig­na­ture update forms. Bra­vo! Why can’t Busi­ness Reply Mail be used for bal­lots, as well? Cal­i­for­ni­a’s San­ta Clara Coun­ty is doing it:

Under direc­tion from the San­ta Clara Coun­ty Board of Super­vi­sors, the Reg­is­trar of Vot­ers will include a new postage-paid return enve­lope with every Vote by Mail bal­lot. Pre­vi­ous­ly, vot­ers had to pay the cost of return postage, fre­quent­ly exceed­ing a sin­gle first-class stamp.

Not­ing that San­ta Clara is only the sec­ond Cal­i­for­nia coun­ty to pro­vide postage-paid Vote by Mail bal­lots, Ms. Bushey stat­ed, “There is no more impor­tant action in a democ­ra­cy than vot­ing. The Reg­is­trar of Vot­ers’ Office is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion. We are pas­sion­ate about increas­ing vot­er turnout and we hope that, by pro­vid­ing pre­paid postage on Vote by Mail bal­lots, we will make it eas­i­er for busy res­i­dents to vote.”

Would this cost mon­ey? Yes, of course it would. But it would be worth it. Requir­ing vot­ers to put a stamp on their return bal­lot pack­ets is an imped­i­ment to vot­ing. It should be our goal to remove as many imped­i­ments to vot­ing as possible.

The Postal Ser­vice and King Coun­ty Elec­tions don’t like admit­ting it, but they already have an unof­fi­cial pol­i­cy of accept­ing and pro­cess­ing return bal­lot pack­ets that are dropped into the mail with­out a First Class stamp and return address.

It is cer­tain­ly true that King Coun­ty Elec­tions sends far few­er sig­na­ture update let­ters in a giv­en year than bal­lots. Bal­lots have to be mailed to all active vot­ers on the rolls, and there were 1,193,706 active vot­ers in King Coun­ty as of Novem­ber 2nd, 2015, and three coun­ty­wide elec­tions held (in April, August, and November).

But not all vot­ers return bal­lots, and a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of King Coun­ty vot­ers who do return bal­lots (124,837 of 474,363 in 2015) take them to a drop box.

We ought to be able to bud­get the cost of pay­ing for return postage for the remain­der of vot­ers who pre­fer to return their bal­lot via USPS.

Now, there is the issue of post­marks. In Wash­ing­ton State, peo­ple can drop bal­lots into the mail as late as the last out­go­ing col­lec­tion time on Elec­tion Day. King Coun­ty Elec­tions has to know when a bal­lot went into the postal stream… oth­er­wise it does­n’t know whether to count it or not. But sure­ly a solu­tion to this prob­lem can be found by work­ing with the Unit­ed States Postal Service.

Per­haps new­ly-elect­ed King Coun­ty Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise can make imple­men­ta­tion of this wor­thy idea a pri­or­i­ty once she takes over from her cur­rent boss Sher­ril Huff, who is leav­ing office in a few weeks.