Early voting = A good thing

[enjoybeing]

Early voting is another one of those issues where all Americans can find common ground, no matter which political party you belong to, if any.

Early voting is a good thing!!
If your state allows you to vote early, you should really consider taking advantage of it! Avoid the long lines on election day, and ensure that even if something comes up on

Comments

Oregon

[maxomai]

Oregon isn't mentioned in this post, and this is a rather glaring omission IMO. Oregon has a roughly 2.5 week long voting period where all voters are mailed their ballots and must return them to the county elections office, either by mail or by dropping them off, by 8 PM on election day. This gives us a regular 80% participation rate, and allows people to mull over their votes, discuss them around the dinner table while they fill out their ballots, etc. It also means no long lines, no provisional ballots, no fake absentee ballots, and none of that other voter suppression bullshit.

The one catch is that the public must have confidence in their local postal system. This is no problem on the West Coast. In Chicago, however, mail is routinely late, lost, or stolen.

Re: Oregon

[enjoybeing]

Wow. That's a pretty cool system.

I did neglect to mention that in the post, but was focusing on "early" voting, as opposed to absentee. However, I would have neglected to mention this regardless, since I didn't realize Oregon has such a special system for voting.
This site (http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/elect/absentearly.htm) does list Oregon as "Oregon conducts all elections solely by mail ballot" but it's listed under absentee voting instead of early voting. I guess because it's a "take home" ballot as opposed to having to come in to vote...

Do you know how long Oregon has had this system in place?

Thanks for the info!