Our ballots

Those of us in places where we are mailed ballots and then just drop them off – most often not mailed but rather deposited in mailbox-like drop boxes – don’t get that little charge from someone calling out at their voting places that “John Doe has voted!” There are downsides to the mail process.

They’re easily outweighed by the good, since we can vote in a quiet, calm atmosphere, check or doublecheck what we need to, take our time, and send off the ballots when ready.

As in our household we’re doing today, at the Carlton City Hall drop box, after having received the ballots in the mail yesterday.

For those who have the option, as people in Oregon and Washington do, early voting actually has a political effect, if you’re mostly supporting one party’s candidates, and the campaigns have some reason to know or suspect it (as is often the case). From here to “election day” – really deadline day, two weeks hence, in these parts – the parties will be frantically going after their supporters, making sure that all of their people have cast ballots. When they see in the county records that your ballot has been received, they quit worrying about you and move on to others who haven’t voted yet.

So voting early (and no, no, not often) has the effect of diminishing the political communications headed your way, and helps the campaigns you support move on to focus on others who weren’t quite so prompt, or who may not vote at all without an extra nudge.