Pie, coffee and getting ballots ready to mail on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024.
The 2024 general election is supposed to be on Nov. 5. But for the two of us in this household, Election Day was this afternoon.
The ballots came in the mail early in the day. Then it took about five minutes to fill in the little ovals on the form, sign the back of the envelopes and seal them.
I took the unnecessary and extra step of putting stamps on the envelopes. We don’t need or want the state to pay the postage so we can vote. It’s an insult, kind of.
The campaign mail will keep coming, adding to the wasted money the various candidates and their committees have already spent.
Campaigning after the ballots have been mailed to voters like us is one of the ways that Oregon’s voting through the mail makes campaigning both more expensive and less useful at the same time.
Some candidates like to invoke democracy and wanting to save it. Well, democracy was pretty safe when elections were held on a fixed date and most of us took them seriously. We trooped to the polling place, said hi to the neighbors and then stayed up that night to get reports of the results.
Now casting a ballot has been made effortless, but in Benton County at least they’ve added ranked-choice voting so that counting the votes is more complicated and takes longer.
But no matter, we mailed our ballots back the day we got them. No sense letting them clutter up the counter or the desk. (hh)
The general election: Getting it over with
Pie, coffee and getting ballots ready to mail on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024.
The 2024 general election is supposed to be on Nov. 5. But for the two of us in this household, Election Day was this afternoon.
The ballots came in the mail early in the day. Then it took about five minutes to fill in the little ovals on the form, sign the back of the envelopes and seal them.
I took the unnecessary and extra step of putting stamps on the envelopes. We don’t need or want the state to pay the postage so we can vote. It’s an insult, kind of.
The campaign mail will keep coming, adding to the wasted money the various candidates and their committees have already spent.
Campaigning after the ballots have been mailed to voters like us is one of the ways that Oregon’s voting through the mail makes campaigning both more expensive and less useful at the same time.
Some candidates like to invoke democracy and wanting to save it. Well, democracy was pretty safe when elections were held on a fixed date and most of us took them seriously. We trooped to the polling place, said hi to the neighbors and then stayed up that night to get reports of the results.
Now casting a ballot has been made effortless, but in Benton County at least they’ve added ranked-choice voting so that counting the votes is more complicated and takes longer.
But no matter, we mailed our ballots back the day we got them. No sense letting them clutter up the counter or the desk. (hh)
Tags: elections by mail, general election, mail elections, Oregon ballots, Oregon elections