Just curious since it seems so much easier and less stressful during any election cycle to fill out a form and mail it in during your free time.
Because in some states you’re not allowed to unless you have qualifying conditions. Also going in person early voting allows you to address any potential issues with registration issues to ensure your vote can count.
I get this question a lot, since my wife and I always vote in person. The place where we vote is right around the corner from us, a 2 minute walk. We go mid morning and there’s never a line. It’s just more fun for us, kind of a tradition. The same poll workers have been there for several years and it’s always nice to see them.
As microscopically unimportant as our two votes are in the big picture, they are still important to us.
If I still lived in some of the places I did in the past, I would definitely mail it in. Those places always had a long wait.
- in my jurisdiction, you have to meet certain criteria to be eligible for a mail in ballot, they don’t just get handed out willy nilly
- i don’t trust the post office with anything vitally important, like a ballot or money
- the early voting place is pretty close to my work, close enough that i hit it up a week and change ago on my lunch break
I’m always paranoid that they will try to throw out my early vote in some way.
paranoia. I am familiar.
you get a confirmation email in the states I know about after your vote is counted early, so you know that your vote was received and recorded.
how would voting in a person make it more difficult for the non-federal employees to throw away your vote versus federal employees in a federal building?
or does it just feel-better-in-person?
I’m just curious about personal experiences here, you should definitely go in person if you prefer that.
Where I vote, I sign a book next to my name, enter everything on a computer, which prints out a ballot. I can review what it says, and then I put it into the scanner which shows that the vote count has increased by one.
The process leaves my “footprints” all over the system. It would be much harder to say I didn’t vote in this way, than if my mail-in ballot “got lost in the mail.”
I’m a bit paranoid about neighbors stealing it. I live in a place where most people vote the way I do, but I’m still anxious about people just being assholes, or thinking I look like a conservative (I get it, I kinda do) even though I’m not.
I still mail mine in though, I just try to put it in my mailbox an hour before the carrier is gonna arrive to pick it up. Plus, I am subscribed to an email system that tells me when they get it.
It is not an option to vote by mail in my state. I like to vote the day of anyway. Feels official.
Does it have other options than in person on election day, or are people who are in the hospital, on travel, or otherwise unable to visit their polling location on election day out of luck?
