Though I did miss turning in my old glasses to the Lyons Club that always sets up tables at the polling places…

Hard as it may be to believe, one of the houses that refuses to acknowledge me is the one where I had to ask Mr. House to stop blasting VH1 at 11 PM on a Thursday night. Not that anybody seems to mind the band practicing the same 1/4 of a song in the not sound insulated garage all day long. Not even those with teenyweeny childrens. Maybe I’m the only one who can hear. I actually have a “Clergy” sticker on my rear window. Not that these people would ever get close enough to see it.

As I see it, the current mood in the US runs toward, “Every person for themself.” That is at the core of both the Republican and Libertarian movements. Community is nothing, the individual is paramount, I am not responsible in any way for the well-being of anybody who is not me. Every man should be an island and if they aren’t they can damn well sink to the bottom of the ocean and good riddance. VBM only elections are just another little chit in that pile.

What’d the VBM only ballot measure get? 65%? More? I can’t remember. Obviously people felt that if they liked VBM (which was already available at the time) then everybody needed to vote that way. I hated the measure at the time and I don’t feel any better about it now. “It will increase voter turnout,” proponents claimed repeatedly. Well, it didn’t. And much like Bushcoadmin, proponents now make different claims about its benefits which are also unsupported by the evidence (voters are more informed, it’s easier to vote, and so on). I honestly can’t see a reason for VBM only other than what I said above.

Well, it’s not my children’s future being affected by this. Yet I can’t help but care about it.

Well, you probably had a much more active branch (branches) of LoWV down that way.

That may very well be so, but VBM didn’t make the info any easier to come by. As I said, Oregon sent out the very same sorts of voter guides you get now before there was VBM only. It is the advent and growing popularity of the internet that has made the info you were lacking upstate more available now than it was then. I just don’t see the connection.

Granted, you are now talking to possibly the most vehement opponent of VBM Only elections in the world. But, honestly, other than the fact that you really like to VBM what are the compelling reasons for VBM Only? Turnout? Nope. More knowledgeable voters? Nope. More available information? Nope. More and easier access? Nope - not when you could’ve VdBM before all other options were eliminated. Saves a teeny portion of the state budget? Okay, I’ll buy that as a true but hardly compelling reason.

Well, if you’d stop blasting Motorhead at 3 in the morning and scrape the “Christ Kills” decal from your bumper, maybe they’d like you more.

I imagine that they made it VBM only because that’s cheaper than running two parallel systems. But hey, Washington has the initiative - find some sponsors and fight the power, man!

You know the voter’s guide you get in the mail? Oregonians got that very same thing before VBM. The big advance in availability of information has been the internet. 10 or 20 years ago the info you can find online was much harder to get. In NY I used to rely on the League of Women Voters election guides, but that didn’t have as much info as I can find now.

Every election day I can’t go to Fred Meyer’s or anywhere even close to the County Elections office without being completely inundated with people working the drop-off boxes and people waiting in line to drop off their ballots.

And every election day I used to go to the library branch around the corner from me. Nobody was working the drop-off boxes - they just sat on the check out counter. There were no lines, no sense that there was anything special happening. Just a larger than usual number of people, most of whom would take 2 steps in, drop a ballot and then turn around and leave.

… for some, it is, in fact, more convenient than finding a polling place).

I in no way disagree. Anybody who wants to vote by mail should be allowed to. I just think that VBM as the only option sucks.

Based on comments like the above quotation, I think that I am not making my position clear. VBM should be made available to anybody who chooses to do so. I am only against VBM as the sole option for voting.

Which also goes to the idea of forgetting that it’s election day.

I did say that I thought I was probably unusual in this respect.

(unlike here where I at the very least walk or drive by a Freddie’s at least once or twice a day)

No drop locations at Freddie’s, etc. up here in Washington. You can either mail your ballot in or go to the county offices. Also, when I was voting in PDX the only drop locations were at library branches, the county offices and A-boy Plumbing. The addition of FM happened after I moved away.

I do remember in NY often going into the voting booth and having no frickin’ clue what some of the things on the ballot were about.

I just can’t understand this. There were stacks of guides from the LOWV everywhere I went for weeks before the election when I was living in NY. This was true in NYC, in Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties. I didn’t have to go out of my way to find info on candidates or bond issues. Newspapers were full of election coverage, TV news had lots of election coverage. A bond measure, sure - those tend to be obscure, but so are the bond measures on your ballot today.

The line of people behind you waiting to vote, tapping their watches and yelling “it’s not War and Peace, buddy, get the lead out!”

But, but… I research at home before I go to the poll. I write down my choices on the sample ballot that was mailed to me. When I get to the poll I vote according to what I have written down. I haven’t had a problem with people getting impatient with me.

The sad fact is that lots of people wait until they hit the poll to make their decision.

If they didn’t find out anything before they arrived at the poll, what are the chances that they’re going to research anything before filling out and mailing their ballot? Hmmm, note to self: must find a study on this.

What I fail to understand about this is why people argue so strongly for VBM only elections. Why is this any better than vote in person only elections? What is wrong with having both? Is it all about the piddling amount of money saved by not having polling places? What?

Living where I live now - the least community like place that I have ever been - makes me yearn for community building activities like never before. Of the other 8 houses on my street, one of them is friendly with me, 2 1/2 others will wave, and the remaining 4 1/2 refuse to acknowledge my existence. I think it would benefit our neighborhood if once every year or so we were to run into each other on line to vote. Maybe we would find something in common and learn each other’s names. With VBM only there isn’t a chance of that ever happening.

Feh on all of you. “I like VBM so you should have to vote that way, too.” Glargh.

The sad fact is that lots of people wait until they hit the poll to make their decision. Having the poll be at their house gives those people a shot at actually reading something about the issue before they pencil in the bubble.

Just out of curiousity, what stopped me from doing that when I voted in person?

If we don’t have enough polling stations, then we should set up more; that in and of itself isn’t a good reason to undo the change to voting by mail.

I didn’t say that it was a good enough reason in and of itself to change mandatory VBM. My primary objection is the elimination of something that builds community. The necessity of voting before Election Day/ the difficulty of getting to a ballot box on Election Day is an additional reason.

Do you believe that saving a small amount of money (as compared to overall state budget) is worth eliminating an event that builds community? Or do you disagree with my (and Robert’s - eww, eww!) belief that Election Day is a community building activity when it involves voting at polling stations?

I can’t because my nearest ballot box is, as far as I can tell, a 40 minute drive from where I live.

Isn’t where you live out of state? I think you wouldn’t have had a local polling place even if the law hadn’t changed.

In any case, ballot boxes are cheaper than polling stations. If we don’t have enough polling stations, then we should set up more; that in and of itself isn’t a good reason to undo the change to voting by mail.

It would be politically difficult. We already had a stretch of forced budget-cutting a couple years back and there isn’t a lot of pork left to cut. We’d have to get rid of actual services.

It’s lovely to know that as a homeowner, I can look forward to a long, slow slide into fiscal conservatism on your behalf. I anticipate the Alas posts of 2012 where you say “really, if the schools can’t get the job done with the funding level they have, then do they really deserve more of my money?”

You can. Many people cannot. People who don’t live in the city don’t necessarily have a ballot box that is as easy to reach as their polling place was. I can’t because my nearest ballot box is, as far as I can tell, a 40 minute drive from where I live. I would have no problem with this if I had chosen to vote by mail, but I was forced into it.

One thing that I’ve gotten exposure to on this blog that I didn’t expect was that there are a number of people here who seem to think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the concept of private property.

??? Huh ?

Maia casts a pretty big shadow around here these days, and I admire her nerve, but who else are you talking about here, exactly, Ron ?

Plenty of other factors are just as likely to decrease turnout. this beauty was quietly signed into law in early ‘06, thanks to the fine bipartisans in Salem. A comment from Noah Page at World S*c**l*st Web explains:

…Noting that the law might spell “extinction” for independent candidates, the newspaper [The Oregonian] went on to describe the law.

Prior to the law, any registered Oregon voter could sign a nominating petition for an independent candidate, or attend a nominating convention. The law changes that. Now, any voter who casts a ballot in a primary election cannot help nominate an independent candidate to the ballot. Typically, this is done by the candidate and his or her supporters collecting a requisite number of signatures on petitions.

Also, the law prohibits voters from signing a petition for more than one candidate.

The origins of the law are obvious. In 2004, Ralph Nader attempted to get on Oregon’s ballot as an independent candidate for president. Conservative groups were quick to urge their own supporters to sign Nader’s nominating petitions. They assumed that in a close race, the liberal consumer advocate would draw votes away from Democrat John Kerry. Presidential elections in Oregon have been close before, so the scenario envisioned and desired by conservatives was a distinct possibility…

Oh, and Amp, sorry for posting my comments about Guv Teddy in the wrong thread. You can move it if you like, or delete it if that’s too much of a hassle. Though 2614 is, so far as I’m concerned, another perfectly good reason to bear a grudge against Kulongoski and his pals.

$400 million a year from a tax cut? Damn, wish we could get one of those here. Your state budget figures must be bloat-o-rama.

Colorado’s budget is approximately 16 billion dollars a year; so it’s not an inherently impossible thing for you folks to cut 2.5% of that ($400 million) out of your budget.

The other thing I dislike about it is that you need to vote before election day.

No you don’t. You can just go to a ballot box and turn in your ballot on election day.

I can see your point about eliminating a community buiding measure. But on balance, I favor VBM, because many of the Republican dirty tricks that involve trying to turn voters away at the voting booth are eliminated by it.