I knew our mail-in ballots had been sent out because my friends were posting photos of their ballots on social media. This meant my mail-in ballot was probably waiting in my mailbox, as well.
But I didn’t retrieve it right away. I let it sit there. The truth is that I don’t like mail-in ballots. I don’t trust them. I experience a traumatic response just thinking about them.
In 2022, remembering what happened in 2020, I took my mail-in ballot directly from my mailbox to the dumpster.
Since mail-in voting was implemented in Oregon back in 1987, nothing good has happened here. The state has gone straight into the toilet.
And when it was implemented nationwide, in 2020, well, then the rest of the country went straight into the toilet, too.
So yeah, I can barely stand the sight of a mail-in ballot. I am physically repulsed. I prefer not to have it in my house.
Utopian fantasies
I didn’t always feel this way. I was happy to participate at first. In the early 1990s, this new way of voting seemed fresh, modern, and convenient.
The envelope shows up in your mailbox. You open the outer envelope and there’s another envelope inside, along with the official ballot, with its ovals and government scan codes.
You fill out the ovals, fold it up, seal it, and sign your name. And then cheerfully drop it in a mailbox.
Safe and secure
Mail-in ballots are designed to look official, sanctioned, secure. They make you feel like the state is being extra careful with your personal ballot, your one precious vote.
But the reality is that your ballot is just beginning its journey. It gets driven here and there. It gets put into piles and bags and maybe gets dumped in one spot and then moved to another spot.
It ends up at the post office, or in a county warehouse space, or it gets fed into a counting machine. It might even get hand-checked by an election worker somehow trained to decide whether your signature looks enough like the one on file.
Really, who knows where your one precious vote goes? After it is opened, depending on who sees it first, it might go straight into the trash!
A feeling of helplessness
In Oregon, mail-in voting is the only way you can vote. The future of your state, your city, your business, your family — it all depends on a complex system of mailing and sorting and counting and verifying.
And then maybe more ballots show up later. And the ballots of dead people are floating around. Or the ballots of people who used to live in your building.
And then activists “harvest” other people’s ballots. “Here, Grandma, let me help you fill that out.”
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L-R: Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images; ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
The big night
After you have mailed in your ballot, a couple of weeks pass, and then election night rolls around. Often, one of the candidates will appear to have an insurmountable lead. The local news shows the tallies. The pollsters make predictions. Everybody gets excited. The projected winner might even dare to celebrate.
But after three decades of mail-in voting, we Oregonians know better. What matters is not who wins on election night. It is who wins in the weeks after, when those last bundles of wayward ballots finally make it in. Only then is the final count concluded.
In Oregon, the winner is always a Democrat. Maybe not for every minor local position. But if it’s important, the Democrat wins.
Since mail-in voting was first implemented in Oregon almost 30 years ago, all our governors have been Democrats.
And for the last 12 years, they have been exclusively LGBTQ, far-left, DEI Democrats. This, in a state once known for its balanced, centrist political climate.
Going national
In 2020, I used my mail-in ballot to vote for President Trump, who won handily on the night of the election, but then somehow lost by a late-arriving influx of mail-in ballots which — against all statistical probabilities — were almost all cast for his opponent.
In 2022, remembering what happened in 2020, I took my mail-in ballot directly from my mailbox to the dumpster.
This was partly out of disgust and partly because I had made an important discovery: While door-knocking for a local candidate, I was given an app that had remarkably specific information about the neighborhood I was canvassing. I could see which residents were Republicans, how often they voted, and whether any other voters lived in their house. Which meant that who you voted for was public knowledge, and not private and anonymous like you had been told.
But if there’s a chance ...
Fast-forward to now, and here I am, faced with another Oregon governor’s race. It is between two women, of course. But one of the women is a reasonable and straightforward Republican. And people say she has a real chance. So now I have to vote. Just in case it will make a difference.
So out to the mailbox I go. To retrieve my mail-in-ballot. I hold my nose. Fill in the ovals. And get it out of my house and into the mailbox as fast as possible.