In your situation, perhaps I wouldn’t, either. Here, Oregonians are very much in the cross hairs of mail-in voting by this regime. In my personal case, we have a one-woman post office and one rural route mail carrier. I’d bet my right tit that the mail carrier is MAGA. He’s incompetent and as mentioned, has lost or misdelivered a lot of my mail. I know it’s him, because the problems started in earnest when he began the route. My neighbors were routinely bringing my misdelivered mail to me. Other times, items would show up in the daily Informed Delivery preview – but never make it to my mailbox. So yeah, in my case, probably the carrier.
More generally, just today, from our Secretary of State:
Drop box is an easy choice for me, despite having to drive for an hour to get to the nearest one. Worth it.
One of the races on the ballot for me this year is County Assessor. I have my ballot in hand. Today, in the mail, comes a letter from the incumbent assessor, telling me that the assessed value of my home is decreased this year. Interesting timing.
Got my ballot earlier than expected, probably in this mailing:
Voting from out of state. Mailed ballot on 10/8, got confirmation it was received followed by confirmation that my signature has been verified and my vote counted yesterday.
Our district Democrats send out a helpful voter guide - really helps sort out the tons of judicial retention votes. Identifies all judges affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point. Also translates innocuous sounding initiatives put on the ballot by the Republican legislature (mainly attempts to bypass the governor’s veto) into readable form so I can vote “No” with a clear conscience. No citizen initiatives made it this cycle.
In FL we have lots of judicial retention votes too. Even our Supremes are subject to those every few years.
Easy enough to find the ones De Santis appointed and vote for their removal. The problem is finding any that some other evil Republican didn’t appoint before De Santis was first elected. Then again the Republican defintion of “Evil” in 2005 is nothing like in 2025. So this process is definitely a real world example of choosing the lesser of two Evils.
I did not get that, dammit. Having no info I left all of them unvoted except the supreme court justice who wound up on my shitlist in 2022 for reasons not remembered.
I ‘love’ the hit ads complaining about the number of vetoes Hobbs has done this session. Well, yeah, when you’ve got a Democratic governor and a MAGAt legislature trying to pass their wet dream bills that’s going to happen.
I got the text notification that my ballot was sent to me. What’s cool is that if I don’t see it in 5 days, I can reach out to the election officials to let them know. They do a really good job in Washington State of giving people all the tools to make sure their ballot arrives and gets counted, and to keep you informed at every step if you want to be (and avenues to communicate immediately if anything goes wrong). I’m lucky to live here.
Given that mail in the USA can take 2 weeks to get from A to B I am mystified that any state or county heavily into mail-in ballots doesn’t send them out by Sep 15. So as to be certain they arrive at voter’s homes by Oct 1. And if returned the very next day, to arrive at the elections board by Oct 16. Leaving roughly 2 weeks to count them and for any mistakes or lost ballots to be noticed and rectified.
It seems criminally negligent to only be mailing ballots out now, almost 30 days later than is fully safe.
I’ve never had a ballot take anywhere near that amount of time to arrive once sent. It’s usually a day or two. I think that’s because of the extremely short distance and fewer number of intervening steps in the process of delivering ballots compared to other sorts of mail.
But I bet your ballot was not mailed from your county elections office. Nor was mine. Some bulk mailing contractor was hired to print them, individualize them, stuff them, and hand them off to USPS for delivery. Where is that company located?
In states that are purely vote by mail, would each county separately handle their own process to hire a bulk mailing contractor, or is that something the state government would do once behalf of all counties, leaving each county to provide their ballot master for reproduction and the list of voters to individualize onto each ballot? I know that I don’t know.
Early voting began yesterday for Tennessee. Mrs Magill and I were the 398th and 399th people to vote at our polling place. Usually there is a strong Republican representation out front of the poll, so far this year they’ve not been there.
I don’t know, but if it’s coming from somewhere far, it’s amazing how quickly they arrive.
Also, by law all ballots in Washington State must be mailed out no later than 18 days before the start of the election.
It seems like a bizarre take to say that ballots must start being counted 2 weeks out, when many jurisdictions don’t get most ballots until the day of voting, and that is how it worked pretty much everywhere for years. Even now, in-person voting is available in Washington State (even if the mailed ballot is the default).
I’m a huge proponent of voting by mail, for many of the reasons you state, and I also like it when votes can be delivered and counted early to allow for quicker results for elections, but I don’t see how it’s necessary when we’ve had plenty of successful elections completed with ballots filled out on voting day.
What is necessary for mail in voting is allowing for a voted ballot to be lost, the voter to notice it hasn’t been received, contact the election board, get a substitute, vote that ballot, and get it back to the election board, all before the final deadline of the polls closing on election day.
In an era when a bunch of ballots from some zip codes disappearing is 100% plausible, the normal system needs to have built-in time to execute do-overs.
That’s why they should plan to have all ballots in and inventoried, if not counted, by 2 weeks prior to election day
I don’t know how you’re getting from A to B. Remember that if all else fails, you can go to an election center and vote in-person on election day if you find out that your ballot didn’t get delivered for whatever reason. You can even print a replacement ballot online rather than wait for one to be mailed to you. And “getting the ballot to the election board” can just mean dropping it off in the ballot box by 8 PM on election day.
None of that should require 2 weeks. The election system in Washington State is very robust, has many fail-safes in place, and has already anticipated all of your concerns you’ve stated. It really is very good the way it’s set up. The only thing it can’t protect against is a voter completely messing things up (like making a ballot illegible, forgetting to vote, and so on), but no system can fully protect against that.
It’s not perfect but it’s probably as close to it as you’re going to find.
Some years back I was a temporary worker at the county Elections Office. Ballots received before Election Day were processed (I did some of the processing) but the votes were not counted until after the polls were closed on Election Day. I thought that was pretty much standard procedure in all states.
Going by the link I gave, that is not the case in Washington State. Well, it is and it isn’t. After a ballot is received and verified, it gets scanned in, and stored. So, there is already a machine with your votes in it. But those votes aren’t tabulated until 8 PM on election night. See this infographic.
The only thing I know about that is the website of my county elections department here in Greater Miami displays four stages for mail-in voting ballot tracking: Voter requested ballot → Ballot mailed to voter → Ballot received back at the election board → ballot counted.
As I said in the OP, my ballot showed the last step “counted” as complete when I first checked on Oct 9th. And if USPS was on the ball, might well have been received on Oct 2 or 3 and counted shortly thereafter.
What exactly does “counted” mean to them? Hellifino.
Got my WA State King County ballot today. Had text messages updating it was on the way. Will get a text when it is received, and another text when it is verified and counted. Will put it in a drop box at the library in a day or two after I suss out a few of the judge positions.
IIRC, two years ago I couldn’t find the ballot right before the election. I was able to go on line, verify my identity and signature by jumping through a few hoops, then print out my ballot with my bar code, dropped it off, and got the text updates as it worked through the system. Worked well.
Supposedly, if there are any extraneous markings on a ballot in some jurisdictions - even something as minor as a checkmark in the corner - the ballot can be disqualified. And supposedly in some places some voters are being intentionally handed marked ballots like this so their votes won’t be counted.
The report I read warned people to check their ballots for any marks when they are given one and request a replacement if they find anything.
