pudge's Journal: I Voted

Today I voted. In person. At the town library.

I know that Washington is almost all vote-by-mail now, but you're still allowed to vote in person at disabled access voting sites.

I do not like voting by mail personally, I think that it should be restricted generally, and I won't do it. I don't even trust the mail for money, why would I trust it with my vote? There are myriad problems with mail voting: ballots could be intercepted either going to or coming from the voter, or simply lost.

Even apart from the USPS, there's still big problems with voting at home: it takes away the guarantee of secrecy. You could sell your vote, or be subject to bribery or blackmail for your vote. And with voting at home by paper, signature verification is much less secure than physical ID verification, and you also have all the problems inherent with paper ballots: they are more susceptible to errors in transferring the votes from paper to electrons, with a greater potential for overvotes, undervotes, and the election board's "interpretation" of my vote, and they degrade over time.

So I won't even drop my paper ballot off, because it still has the problems inherent in paper ballots, plus the lack of secrecy guarantees. That's not to say voting machines don't have their problems too, but they are fewer, and easier to fix.

I wonder if I am the last person since all-mail voting went into effect in Snohomish County to have never missed an election, and never voted by mail ballot (dropped off or mailed). When it goes into effect statewide, I wonder if I'll be the last in the state. Everyone else I know has either missed elections, or has voted by mail.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

California too...

[Bill Dog]

...seems to be pushing us to vote by mail. But we've had a lot of problems with the electronic voting machines here the last several elections, like non-minor outages on election day, plus certification problems. And voting by mail is just too convenient for the public, and probably cost effective or at least major headache-avoiding for the state. I plan on signing up for it this time. But then I'm against voting machines. (As I think now most people are, so I expect the idea to go the way of the dodo bird.

Re:

[ncc74656]

Electronic voting has worked well enough here in Nevada for several years now. The machines used for the past few elections (don't recall offhand how far back they go) print a paper record that you can verify for yourself before casting the vote, so I don't see how they're less secure than other means. If yours don't do that (the first ones we used in the mid-to-late '90s didn't), that might be something to complain about.

Election day for the primary was last Tuesday. The caucus earlier this year (and