Mail-in Elections

In 1999 Oregon voters decided to make all of our elections 100% vote-by-mail. Being an Oregon resident myself, I remember that I was not wild about the idea. I may have even voted against it. I can’t remember why I didn’t like the idea. Maybe I disliked the idea of change, or maybe I thought there were too many ways it could get fouled up. Whatever the reason, I didn’t like the idea. But having had vote-by mail for the past 20 years I can tell you that I do like it now (it didn’t take 20 years. After the first election or two I was a convert). I am not alone in that opinion. Almost everyone in Oregon likes our election system, Republicans, Democrats and independents. It is convenient. The results are processed quicker. There are no lines, no fraud, no problems. I say there is no fraud, but of course there is always someone trying to game the system, but what I mean is that there is no more fraud than any other system, and that amounts to a minuscule fraction of the ballots. All the studies have shown that Mail-in elections do not favor one party over another. If you are uneasy about putting your ballot in the mail, you can take it to the County Courthouse or to one of various secure drop boxes located in each county.

Oregon is one of five states currently doing mail-in elections, and while every state does things a bit differently, all five appear to be doing just fine. This year, due to Covid, there are some additional states that will now mail ballots to every voter. This election year there has been much misinformation doled out about mail-in elections, this can be ignored because it is, you know, misinformation. But some legitimate concerns have been raised. The legitimate concerns deal with a Post Office that is underfunded and some states that may not be ready for the volume of mail-in ballots they will receive. The second question can be addressed by the states; there is time. The first question (the funding of the Post Office) requires leadership from the Congress.

We need to figure this out quickly because it does seem to be the most logical way to hold an election during a pandemic. There is no reason we should not have a fair and accurate election in November. After all, we were able to hold a national election during the Civil War. If we could hold an election then, we can hold one now.

(My science fiction novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Link to Star Liner

Comments

Second Wind

You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running. In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, which is tr

Roy Batty Figures it out

This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner . If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it. In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner , the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech: “I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.” I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this

The Outsider

I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up (or

A speculative mind

Search This Blog