I live in WA state. We have had safe mail in voting for many years. For many years, they didn’t provide a self-addressed stamped envelope but now they do. Even so, we also have drop boxes which I use for every election. We can also track our ballot online from it being received to being counted. The media has finally started talking about drop boxes and hopefully it will get more attention for those concerned about mailing it back. Drop boxes are the best way to vote in my opinion but it’s a personal decision.
Voting in person is great if you live in an area where voter suppression is not a problem and so there’s no need to stand in line in close proximity to others for two to eight hours (or longer!) However, we also need to remember that Russia was shown to have hacked into voter rolls in every state in the US in 2016 — AND it was shown that many voting machines are extremely easy to hack into (with actual children able to do it in minutes!) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/an-11-year-old-changed-election-results-on-a-replica-florida-state-website-in-under-10-minutes It’s hard to believe that the Russian GRU couldn’t/wouldn’t do the same. Paper ballots are far harder to fake because hacking is taken out of the picture. If you’re afraid of mailing your ballot (which is a viable fear, considering that Trump has his hand-picked toady in charge of the post office now) many states have ballot drop-off boxes and/or allow you to hand your sealed absentee/mail-in ballot in to your local town hall.
I vote by mail all the time. The only concern I have is trump’s interference in USPS operations. Which, if Republicans had a spine, should be bitching about to high heaven.
I mail in lottery tickets when they’re worth 100ish bucks or less, no problems. I’d probably not mail in a multi million dollar powerball ticket. Last I checked my vote was worth one vote. Unless my vote is of powerball proportions and worth millions then I’m not too worried about mailing it.
I vote by mail in every election and I trust that process far more than on-site voting machines. They can be hacked, before and after votes are cast, and because the software is proprietary, legislators can’t even determine exactly how accurate or secure they are. No paper trail? No faith. Paper receipt? No guarantee that’s what was recorded. And with paper ballots being different (and with different security measures) in every district, the potential for “wide-spread fraud” is practically nil. Fraud doesn’t scale that way.
And yes, I would send my lottery ticket through the mail. Registered/certified/insured, with tracking.
I live in WA state. We have had safe mail in voting for many years. For many years, they didn’t provide a self-addressed stamped envelope but now they do. Even so, we also have drop boxes which I use for every election. We can also track our ballot online from it being received to being counted. The media has finally started talking about drop boxes and hopefully it will get more attention for those concerned about mailing it back. Drop boxes are the best way to vote in my opinion but it’s a personal decision.
Voting in person is great if you live in an area where voter suppression is not a problem and so there’s no need to stand in line in close proximity to others for two to eight hours (or longer!) However, we also need to remember that Russia was shown to have hacked into voter rolls in every state in the US in 2016 — AND it was shown that many voting machines are extremely easy to hack into (with actual children able to do it in minutes!) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/an-11-year-old-changed-election-results-on-a-replica-florida-state-website-in-under-10-minutes It’s hard to believe that the Russian GRU couldn’t/wouldn’t do the same. Paper ballots are far harder to fake because hacking is taken out of the picture. If you’re afraid of mailing your ballot (which is a viable fear, considering that Trump has his hand-picked toady in charge of the post office now) many states have ballot drop-off boxes and/or allow you to hand your sealed absentee/mail-in ballot in to your local town hall.
I vote by mail all the time. The only concern I have is trump’s interference in USPS operations. Which, if Republicans had a spine, should be bitching about to high heaven.
I mail in lottery tickets when they’re worth 100ish bucks or less, no problems. I’d probably not mail in a multi million dollar powerball ticket. Last I checked my vote was worth one vote. Unless my vote is of powerball proportions and worth millions then I’m not too worried about mailing it.
I vote by mail in every election and I trust that process far more than on-site voting machines. They can be hacked, before and after votes are cast, and because the software is proprietary, legislators can’t even determine exactly how accurate or secure they are. No paper trail? No faith. Paper receipt? No guarantee that’s what was recorded. And with paper ballots being different (and with different security measures) in every district, the potential for “wide-spread fraud” is practically nil. Fraud doesn’t scale that way.
And yes, I would send my lottery ticket through the mail. Registered/certified/insured, with tracking.