Washington
In reply to the discussion: In exactly 9 days, we here in WA are gonna show the rest of the country what revolution looks like. [View all]LisaM
(27,811 posts)The voter participation in Washington last November was at its lowest participation level since 1932. So all-mail voting has not worked. I find it a little harder to vote by mail (and I hate paying for it). I generally walk my ballot to the county building. There are nowhere near enough dropoff spots. One of the four dedicated Seattle spots is in a park. My neighborhood is not served at all by a dropoff box, so if I do choose that route, I need to do it during the workday. Another unintended consequence is spoiled ballots that can't be fixed. I read that they've had up to 30,000 some elections. Once you've mailed it in, you can't fix it. I think that's terrible. If you vote in person and spoil your ballot, you can correct it (say you overvoted - the machine should spit it back, for example).
The number of votes already cast for Wellstone that couldn't be counted were greater than the margin Norm Coleman won by. IIRC, it changed the makeup of the Senate too. If we are to have this early voting, which I know is very popular, you absolutely have to account for this scenario. There was another race in NJ in 2000 where the Democratic candidate was disqualified for some legal issues, but in that case they successfully argued that Frank Lautenberg could be put on the ballot and he won.
The only bright side of the Wellstone/Coleman debacle was that it energized Al Franken to run for office because he disliked Coleman so much.