Vote by Mail
Oregon voter ballot
This post is more for the benefit of my international readers ;-) (I.e. rellies in New Zealand.)
Now that Tom and I are citizens of the USA (and yes, we still have our New Zealand citizenship – to answer the question that always comes up) we get to vote in this historic election. All national elections here get called historic (how, after all, could the mainstream media sell advertising during a run-of-the-mill presidential race?) but this one truly is historic. For reasons we all know about and which I need not repeat here.
Each state of this union does the voting thing their own way. Oregon has Vote by Mail. The benefit to Vote by Mail is no one has to take time off work nor stand in line to vote. It’s good, too, for the disabled. The ballot comes to your house, you fill it out, and you send it in or drop it off. Another benefit is a paper trail! No creepy, hackable electronic voting machines here thank you very much. The downside to Vote by Mail is the loss of that feeling of civic camaraderie that apparently happens when strangers stand in line together to vote. I haven’t experienced it, but Oregonians who remember a time before Vote by Mail say they miss the old way. Vote by Mail does statistically raise voter participation, though, and I’m all for that.
My international readers may be under the impression the ballot comes with two choices: McCain and Obama. Pick one and you’re done. What doesn’t make it into overseas news is that all over the country Americans are voting for thousands and thousands of other positions besides the president. Senators, congresspeople, mayors, local senators and representatives (each state has its own government – it’s not just the feds running everything from D.C.), plus city councillors, school board members, judges, and so on. And in a state like Oregon that has citizen initiated referenda (aka citizen initiatives), there are ballot measure, too.
Lucky for me Oregonians take their politics seriously, and there’s plenty of reading material prepared and distributed (er, rather a lot, actually) to help me decide. (I do like the Willamette Week’s riff on Shepard Fairey’s Obama HOPE design.)
Okay, I’m going to go vote now. Once I have read all the endorsements and ballot measure explanations that have piled up on the dining table.
