The latest idea to crop up in the scramble to reduce the county's shortfall is eliminating Election Day voting and shifting entirely to a vote-by-mail system. According to Total Buzz:

Chapman University political science Professor Fred Smoller says the county can help address its budget shortfall while spurring voter turnout by shutting down Election Day polling places, and doing all the voting by mail. He has talked with or written county Supervisors John Moorlach, Janet Nguyen and Pat Bates, as well as Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley, pointing out that Oregon is 100-percent mail ballots and in Washington, 37 of 39 counties conduct elections solely by mail.

"It saves (those states) millions of dollars per election, leaves a paper trail, improves voter turnout, and has been well received by voters," Smoller wrote in a letter to Moorlach chief of staff Mario Mainero.

The Orange County Employees Association chimed in with an endorsement of the idea.

OK, but this is voting we're talking about, so saving money shouldn't be the sole consideration. Voter fraud is a topic Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund has focused on for years, and I offer up his observations for readers consideration:

Florida also has a rich history of problems with absentee ballots. "The lack of in-person, at-the-polls accountability makes absentee ballots the tool of choice for those inclined to commit fraud," the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in 1998, after a mayoral election in Miami was thrown out when officials learned that "vote brokers" had signed hundreds of phony absentee ballots. A panel of state appellate judges ordered a new election, noting that "unlike the right to vote, which is assured every citizen by the Constitution, the ability to vote by absentee ballot is a privilege."

Absentee ballots are much more easily abused for several reasons. "In the absence of a secret ballot, it becomes much easier to enter into an illegal vote buying contract, because the buyer can verify how the seller has voted," notes Rick Hasen, a noted expert on election laws at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "In addition, because voting takes place out of the public eye, the possibility of coercion or intimidation about how to vote becomes possible."

You can read the rest of that March 2008 column here, and a more recent article on the topic here.

We should also keep in mind that the growth of voting-by-mail has increased the cost of campaigns, a favorite bugaboo of good government-types. It is more convenient for voters, but it also creates a longer time frame during which campaigns must communicate with voters. In other words, candidates have to send out more mail over a longer period of time, which makes running for office more expensive -- and heightens the premium on fundraising versus meeting voters when you factor in controbution limits.

Furthermore, we should also consider the desirability of voters casting their ballots over a period of several weeks, which is what a total vote-by-mail system would entail. If a major event or issue erupts in the last couple of weeks of the campaign, you'll have a sitaution in which a large number of voters cannot factor that into their decision because they have already mailed in their vote.

Just some things to consider before rushing to emrbace total vote-by-mail as a budgetary palliative.