National Vote By Mail Day: Prepaid Return Postage, the Next Step in Postal Voting
It is rare to experience a new holiday, but today Americans can celebrate the very first National Vote by Mail Day. Organized by NextGen America to promote safe, secure, and efficient voting nationwide, this event marks the great strides in ballot access made by states which have adopted all-mail voting. While postal voting is certainly better than the alternatives, variation by different states in the mechanics of voting by mail has created new opportunities for improvements. The most important reform in states which have already adopted all-mail voting is to begin to offer prepaid return postage to all voters. For states which are considering moving from in-person to postal voting, inclusion of prepaid returns should be a component of this effort.
I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll address it right up front: prepaid return postage on all ballots is far less expensive than most people assume. In fact, it would cost significantly less than traditional in-person voting and may even save money in states which have already adopted all-mail in voting.
As an initial matter, all-mail voting saves money. A lot of it. When the state of Colorado switched from in-person to postal voting in 2013, the cost per vote in the state fell from nearly $16 to $9.56. In other states, savings of 33–50% have been recorded in elections conducted entirely by mail. On this basis, even with prepaid return postage, simply switching from traditional voting to postal voting will generate substantial cost savings for states.
In states which have already made the switch, though, postage remains a serious confusion for voters when returning their ballots in the mail. Due to differing lengths of ballots (and thus, different weights of envelopes) in various counties in Colorado, there is no statewide norm for the amount of postage needed to return a ballot by mail. In 2018, the cost to return a Denver ballot by mail was 71 cents but Durango’s 2019 municipal election ballots could be returned for only 55 cents. That year, Larimer County advised voters that ballots only required 50 cents in postage to mail. In 2016, twenty-four Colorado counties had a two-page ballot which required additional postage (68 cents). Adding even more confusion, the required postage often does not match up with the price of stamps, forcing voters to either overpay when mailing their ballot or use small denomination stamps (which few people have). Furthermore, studies indicate that young people sometimes fail to vote because they do not own stamps or even know where to purchase them.
In light of these challenges, Washington became the first state to provide prepaid return postage on all ballots in a trial-run during the 2018 primary. California also offers prepaid returns on all absentee ballots and Oregon’s governor “made prepaid ballots a top priority in her budget . . . .” Cost has obviously been the major sticking point for these proposals. Washington set aside $1.2 million for the 2018 Primary and General Elections, while Oregon predicts the cost to be no more than $2.9 million per election cycle if every single voter returned their ballot in the mail. California has estimated that, had it prepaid postage on all ballots returned by mail during the 2016 general election, the cost would have been $5.5 million.
In Colorado, neither the state nor counties record the breakdown of ballots returned by mail, drop box, or are that voted in person. Nonetheless, some educated extrapolations from the data which is available can provide a rough estimate of the additional cost prepaid return postage would impose in the state. In 2018, 1.5 million ballots were returned prior to election day. In 2016, 2.6 million ballots had been voted by that same point, and in 2014, the first year of all-mail voting in Colorado, 1.38 million ballots were returned before election day. Even assuming that all of these ballots were returned via mail, and all were two page ballots requiring extra postage, the cost of providing full price, first-class prepaid return postage for all voters statewide would have been around $1.65 million in a midterm election and $2.86 million in a presidential year. The actual number, though, would likely be far lower — probably closer to $280,000 for a midterm and $500,000 for a presidential election.
First, many ballots will still be returned in person. In Oregon, where the way ballots are returned is tracked, only around forty percent of voters mail their ballots back, the rest choose to hand deliver them. Since 2012, Washington has recorded the number of ballots returned using a drop box but does not track the number of ballots mailed or voted in person. From the available data, less than sixty percent of ballots are returned by mail, probably closer to fifty percent or less. In 2014, Denver determined seventy percent of voters returned their ballots in person. And historically in Colorado elections, roughly ten percent of all votes are cast in person on election day. Even assuming an uptick in ballots returned via mail due to prepaid postage, around half of all voters can be expected to continue hand delivering their ballots to a drop box or voting location or casting their vote in person at a polling center. This, alone, would cut the cost of prepaid return postage for ballots by half because, when using Business Reply Mail, the sender only pays the return postage when the recipient actually chooses to return the mail piece in the mail.
Second, the Post Office offers discounted postage for bulk and non-profit mailers, both of which would be available to states should they choose to offer prepaid return ballots. Based on the USPS’ postage rates, the cost to purchase first-class postage for two million three-ounce letters would be $778,000, or $0.389 each, even before taking into account election officials’ tax-exempt status or any discounted rate for prepaid return (as opposed to outgoing mail) postage. Thus, even this discounted rate is likely still an over-estimate of the true per-ballot postage cost.
Therefore, based on Colorado’s voter participation rate since changing to all-mail balloting, assuming half of the ballots are returned by mail, and a postage cost of $0.389 for each ballot, the statewide cost to prepay returns for general election ballots would be roughly $280,000 in a midterm election and about $500,000 in a presidential year. These figures do not include primary ballots (which, in some other states, would be paid by political parties instead of taxpayers) but do provide at least a rough estimate of the cost associated with universal prepaid returns on mail ballots.
Finally, the additional expense would likely be even less, and some places which already use all-mail voting may see a net savings by offering prepaid return ballots to all voters. Right now, clerks pay for any ballot mailed with no or insufficient postage. While election offices generally aren’t forthcoming with the details of how much this costs, it means that not all of the costs associated with offering prepaid postage would be “new” expenses for states. Additionally, some Colorado counties have already implemented prepaid return postage for ballots on an ad-hoc basis. Thus, for some clerks, a statewide mandate would impose no additional costs or burden. Moreover, offering universal prepaid returns could allow a reduction in the number of in-person polling places, as well as the hours that polls are open during early-voting. This would enable counties to save money on staffing and other election related overhead such as facility and equipment costs. Counties, though, must be careful to maintain adequate in-person polling options in areas poorly served by the Post Office, such as Tribal Reservations and areas with large homeless populations.
In these times of COVID-19, states across the country should be doing everything possible to protect all voters’ right to vote. All-mail in voting is the simplest, safest, cheapest, and most secure means of voting, not just during a pandemic, but in any election. Today, we should celebrate the states which have already implemented voting by mail for all voters and push the remaining states to follow their lead. Simply mailing out ballots, though, is not enough. Only by offering prepaid return ballots will election officials ensure that no one is prevented from voting for want of a stamp.
Nicholas Monck served as the Deputy Director for Voter Protection for the Colorado Democratic Party in 2018 and Boulder County Democratic Party Legal Team Co-Lead from 2017–2019. Opinions expressed are his own and do not represent the views of his employer.
