I get some people literally can’t go out or are out of town, but still. Why not just go in person and eliminate the middle man?
Just some can think of from the top of my head
- not everyone has transport / time
- getting it done earlier means you can’t forget or miss later
- safety: some ballot boxes have been set on fire
- it’s easier
- shame: some prefer to not show their face to go vote
- safety: a gathering would be a risk with people who have a shitty immune system or asthma
People who start from an illogical assumption and then expect you to argue against it confuse me. “Failure points”? I’m guessing you’re young and don’t mail things often, but they basically don’t happen. Like, ever. 999/1000 times, it just gets there, they all do. The same could be said of risking a malicious person collecting the polls at a drop-box, or it could get dropped in the election day chaos.
As for why they might not want to go in person? That’s literally the easiest option, there’s not really a middle-man. My state sends the ballot in the mail (yes, I’ve always gotten it). Then we can leisurely fill it out at home, privately, with all the time and resources to research ballot measures, etc. Then just drop it in outgoing mail at home or work and it’ll just get there. Again, never even heard of anyone ever having issues. And you can track it and submit a provisional ballot in case something does happen to the original one.
Because it forces you to be in a specific place at a specific time otherwise. I don’t even live in the state I’m registered to vote in.
All my ballots have been received and counted so far just fine. I’ll go to the polls if there is a problem but until that changes, I’m going with what’s convenient.
Most important for me is being able to simply read the ballot and research candidates at my leisure. Not sure about failure points, my state has used mail voting for many years without issue and if Trump’s lackey makes ballots go missing I will know because I can track my ballot on the state’s website.
A really important point is some voting machines are ‘ballot marking devices’ which give you a human readable paper ballot with your choices (good) however the actual counting is done using a barcode or QR code (bad). There is never a good reason to prevent voters from verifying their ballot has their intended choices, yet some areas still insist on using these absurd machines.
