Nothing beats voting in Washington

Voting in Washington state is the gold standard for how voting should be done. It’s safe, secure, insanely convenient, and encourages informed voting.

Washington state is a vote-by-mail state so everyone votes by mail in every election. A few weeks before the election you receive a ballot in the mail addressed to you by name. You open it, fill in some bubbles, put it into the provided return envelope, sign the envelope, and drop it in a US Postal Service mailbox — no stamp required. Unlike some states, which must receive your ballot by election day, in Washington your ballot must be postmarked by election day.

Or you can put it in one of dozens of official ballot drop boxes across the state. King County alone has over 70 drop boxes and 94% of King County’s 2 million people live within 3 miles of a drop box. Ballot drop boxes are open from when ballots are mailed until 8p on election day.

Once the elections office receives your ballot, your signature on the envelope is matched with your voter registration. If it doesn’t match, the elections department will reach out to you and confirm it’s from you. If it does match, your voting record is updated to indicate that you voted — allowing you to confirm online that they received your ballot. The envelope is then separated from your ballot. This way who you voted for is still confidential and not tied to you. The ballot is then tabulated and retained as a paper trail if ballots need to be recounted.

It’s literally that simple. You get something in the mail, you fill it out, and you send it in. You can vote from the comfort over your own home with a beverage of your choice in hand.

You don’t have to:

• take off work
• find your polling place
• stand in line
• remember which propositions you were against
• remember which candidates with similar names you wanted to support
• navigate confusing electronic voting interfaces
• worry the voting machine marked your ballot incorrectly
• worry about someone hacking the electronic voting machine
• request an absentee ballot
• be around people in a pandemic

But it gets better. Yes, really.

In Washington state about a month before the election every household receives two voter’s pamphlets. One from the state and one from the county. The state pamphlet contains information about state-wide elections, including bios on every candidate running for office (submitted by the candidates) and information about every measure on the ballot. The county pamphlet contains similar information for the county and city measures, again with bios on every candidate running for office and information about every measure on the ballot.

Picture it: it’s a lazy Sunday morning and you sit down at the kitchen table with a muffin, a cup of coffee, your ballot, a pen, and the voter’s pamphlets. You read over the ballot measures and candidates, mock Goodspaceguy, do some googling on candidates, laugh along with The Stranger’s voting guide, maybe even look up some endorsements. Fill in a few bubbles on your ballot, put it in an envelope, seal it, sign the back, mosey over to your local US mailbox or county ballot box, and drop it in. Congratulations, you have successfully participated in democracy in your pajamas.

This. This is the pinnacle of voting.

If you don’t have this already, demand it from your state government. There is no reason for your state not to adopt the same thing as Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii — besides voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and cronyism.

Demand it from your state representatives.
Demand it from your state senators.
Demand it for democracy.