You might not expect Idaho's chief elections officer to pooh-pooh the idea of making it easier for his constituents to cast a ballot.
But that's just what Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney did last month when he told political columnist Chuck Malloy he was no fan of vote by mail.
"I don't believe that the 5 to 6 percent difference is enough to convince our Legislature that it is worth the added problems to go to a mail-ballot system," Denney said.
Denney's remark caught the eye of Conservation Voters for Idaho field organizer Chris Parri of Boise, who argued that by dismissing the chance to boost turnout, the secretary of state is kissing off thousands of potential new voters.
"If they constituted a city, it would be almost as big as Twin Falls and become the ninth biggest city in the state," Parri wrote in a letter to the editor.
Here's an educated guess: The people in Denney's Republican Party have won political office under the current rules; they have no interest in adopting any change that puts them at risk. And bringing thousands of new voters to the polls would do precisely that.
That's not to say Idaho doesn't do some good things. It allows anyone to register at the polls. The Gem State enables people to collect absentee ballots for any reason 45 days before an election. It also allows early voting six weeks ahead of time. And Idaho is about to launch online voter registration.
But for most Idahoans, voting means taking time from work to stand in line at a polling station on Election Day. Turnout has been trending downward - from a high of nearly 70 percent of the voting-age population in 1980 to about 37.6 percent in 2014, when the Gem State last elected its governor, state officials, both members of Congress, a U.S. senator and the entire Legislature.
The trend is even worse in the all-important Republican primary election, which dipped down to 16.6 percent of the population age 18 and older in 2014 - vs. nearly 31 percent in 1980. Some of that is deliberate. Thanks to Denney and his allies, the GOP primary is closed to anyone unwilling to declare himself a loyal Republican.
Meanwhile, in Washington and Oregon, voters receive a ballot in the mail. That gives them the time to pore over information and fill out the ballot at home.
In 2014, Washington's turnout was slightly lower at 37.1 percent of the population age 18 and older. But that was a skinny ballot; Washington state elected its governor and state officials during the 2016 presidential election.
A better comparison is Oregon, which also elected its state leadership in 2014. That year, 47.2 percent of Oregon's voting age population cast a ballot. For the sake of argument, let's say Idaho got similar results.
A 47.2 percent turnout would bump up Idaho's total vote by almost 114,000 people - more than the populations of Coeur d'Alene, Lewiston and Moscow combined.
Perhaps all of those new voters would share the preferences of their neighbors who already vote. You can never tell, however. You might find a few latent progressives among that crowd.
So it's probably not the fear of fraud that makes Denney and Idaho's politicians skeptical of allowing people to vote at home.
What's stopping them is fear of the unknown voter. - M.T.
