Another Oregonian here, and I have found zero downsides and all upside.
When I lived in CA, I signed up for permanent absentee so I could vote at my leisure and not have to worry about making it to a polling station. This is essentially the same but the entire system is set up for it, so it’s even easier: no confusing instructions for in-person versus mail-in voting, pre-paid envelopes to return by mail or drop-off sites throughout the city, and everyone else is voting the same way. I get a text when my ballot goes out and another after I return it and it’s accepted, so I don’t have to worry if it was received.
Though we don’t (or at least I don’t) get any indication that ballots have been received/accepted. There is a statewide website that tracks ballot status, but it would be helpful to get a positive notification.
Seconding the positive evaluation of California’s VBM. Very easy, and it gives you a chance to research conflicting propositions before getting all confused at the polling place.
Thanks, that’s interesting to know. They certainly don’t advertise the feature.
But it looks like (for Pierce County, at least) adding the number essentially requires re-registering, and there’s a hitch in my case: my last name includes an apostrophe (which computers hate, for reasons that are far too involved to go into here); and while my current voter registration simply eliminates it, my driver’s license replaced it with a space — meaning that the names don’t match. And my experience has been that any attempt to reconcile things opens the proverbial can of invertebrates. So I guess I’ll just keep checking manually.
You can also add your phone number in person at the Secretary of State’s office. Which might just mean a different person unsuccessfully dealing with the same computer problems, but maybe they know the secret override.
Of course, I doubt very much that the minor annoyance of checking manually is enough to entice you to visit the SoS office in person.
I started doing it decades ago when I was an elections worker in California after a full day working for the county and couldn’t make time to vote in person. I voted absentee instead – which is basically the same as vote by mail. That was for almost 20 years.
It’s been vote by mail for the entire 20 years I’ve now lived in Oregon.
I just completed a May election ballot for here. I enjoyed taking my time to research candidates and proposed measures. I’ll drop that ballot in a secure ballot drop box today when I go run errands. As others have noted, I’ll be able to determine when my ballot is received and counted.
If I just had to vote in person, I do have that option – but since I prefer the drop box, I’m not sure what in-person voting involves in Oregon.
But to some, there’s a version (perversion?) of Blackstone’s ratio — “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” — which holds that it’s better that a thousand eligible voters be disenfranchised than that somewhere, somewhen, some ineligible person cast a ballot. And anything which makes it easier to vote and thereby increases the hypothetical chances that the hypothetical ineligible voter* does cast a ballot is anathema.
(I can’t seem to find a reference online, but after the 2000 election one Republican legislator advocated a return to in-person, one-day voting in Washington. IIRC he was shot down pretty much universally; too bad, because I was counting on cornering the market for torches and pitchforks.)
* Who, when it does happen, is almost always a Republican
Um, what? I’ve never heard someone explicitly advocate for this. Even when it might be someone’s underlying and unexpressed goal, it’s always for the purpose of disenfranchising some specific group.
How does it even make sense anyway? A thousand missing votes has 1000x the impact on the vote total of one fraudulent vote. The “one innocent suffer” maxim is true because it’s an actual person suffering. In an election, votes don’t have feelings, it’s just the total that matters.
Washingtonian here. All good, no bad. Even in California I was “permanent absentee,” so I haven’t gone to an actual voting booth in something like 20 years.
I live in Washington, but used to live in Oregon (and California before that). I remember watching my parents vote at the polling booth in CA for the '96 election, but VBM is all I’ve ever known since I started being able to vote in 2004 (I turned 18 in 2002 after election day).
It’s convenient. I can take my time doing research and filling out my ballot in the comfort of my own home. Mailing it back in used to require a stamp but even that’s been removed now. If I don’t trust the mailbox or my letter carrier for some reason, I can use the drive-up ballot box and drop my ballot off in there. I can track my ballot online to confirm it’s been received and counted.
The only (very mild) downside for me, at least in the jurisdictions I’ve voted in, is that I’ve never gotten any kind of “I voted” sticker. Some of the ones I’ve seen online look pretty cool.
NV, easy, no problems. I get a sample ballot, then the real one closer to the election. I don’t think postage is free so I just drop it off at a polling location which is the supermarket right down the street the last few elections. I also have the option to vote in person by bringing the ballot to the polling location. Voting is on a computer but after you review your votes on the screen, it asks you to confirm again with a printed paper ballot behind a plexiglass screen.
From what I’ve seen of CA it’s similar, though their ballots are kind of insanely long with some quite bizarre propositions (e.g. the dialysis ones).