Voting by mail is very limited here. You need a valid reason to vote by mail and you have to get your ballot notarized.
We do have early voting which they have made easier by adding polling places when it used to be at one of the county offices only. Now it is at many libraries and community centers.
Other things they have done are allowing you to go to any polling place in your county and posting wait times online for all of the polling places.
Our ballots are the type where you fill in the circles. I hate those and wish they would go back to electronic voting.
In FL, I vote by mail. It takes me the me to look up each person and the amendments.
In the pre-Covid days, the candidates and often their families would be outside the library and/or meetings in clubhouses & public places.
Election Day purist here - in person at my poling location on Election Day (General, Primary, Special) is how I have voted in all but two elections, where I went to my county Board of Elections office for early voting. It just didn’t feel the same, there is an energy on Election Day that I enjoy - I now volunteer on Election Day at my poling location too! l look up my ballot online ahead of time (ballotpedia.org or vote.org) so its just the actual casting of the vote that I save for Election Day.
I know some day physically getting to the polls on Election Day will be harder and make absentee voting by mail make more sense so I do appreciate that as an option. But I’ll always be grateful for the memories of taking my kids with me to the polls on Election Day or the story I get to pass down about the General Election where I stood in line for 90 min to cast my vote that future generations probably won’t be able to imagine (we didn’t have early voting back then, just in person day of or absentee because you were actually absent from the area that day).
I’m in Colorado. Everyone gets their ballots in the mail, and the Ballottrax system notifies us when our ballots have been mailed, received, and processed. I do not mail my ballot but rather use a drop box that’s a few minutes’ drive from my house (and on the way to the grocery store, so it’s especially convenient!).
I think that it is possible to vote in person (in which case the bar code for the mailed ballot is nullified), but I don’t know anyone who does this. I used to love the ritual of voting in person, and I do kind of miss it, but I like being able to research ballot issues and take my time as I fill out my ballot, and this system is very secure. Also, I happen to work long days on Tuesdays (this isn’t flexible) and it would be difficult for me to make arrangements to vote in person. I would do it if I had to, of course, or I guess I would hope to vote early, but I really appreciate our vote-by-mail system.
NJ, voted absentee during college (full disclosure, my parents were very involved in politics, republicans but never tried to influence who we voted for, they were poll workers until their deaths. After college always voted in person until covid, switched to mail in, very convenient, especially for my adult kids who were oos for college, and then when they moved out but stayed in NJ and didn’t change their address yet. Did go in person for the last primary, only because my daughter waited too long to ask for mail in and at 25, had never voted in person, and I knew she wasn’t quite sure how it worked.
NC - usually vote early, mostly in person, always with research ahead of time re candidates and issues. I did request a ballot by mail one year but hand-delivered it to the BOE, so I could witness it being scanned in.
Washington (please don’t say “state”). Here is our procedure. Receive ballots in the mail, pick a Saturday before the Election Day to vote, sit down with or without a beverage flipping through the pamphlets and internet to research and debate obscure local candidates, fill in the circles, package up the ballots into the return envelopes, and the next morning walk about 2-2.5 miles to the closest ballot box to drop them off.
Your pre election ritual sounds a lot like ours! D2 also usually joins us to talk about who/what we are voting on since she lives in the same city as us.
My daughter voted by mail (known then as absentee ballot) when she was out of state for college. Many college kids change their residences to their college town and vote locally, she did not.
She particularly enjoys the pre-election research and will spend a lot of time doing homework on all of the candidates and ballot measures (we have lots of those here in MA).
I have typically been registered unaffiliated and in NJ and NY that meant no primary elections for me. In MA, I can vote in a primary without declaring a party affiliation.
I live in a small town in MA and I usually vote in-person at the one polling place in town. This year, I wasn’t home for the MA primary on Sept. 1st. I received a vote by mail ballot much before the primary (can’t remember how early) and voted/mailed it before I left town.
Here in East TN, I vote early in every election: There is a place for early voting in the local courthouse; and as I am in the courthouse most every day, it is very convenient for me.
I’m in PA. I request a mail in ballot, complete and drop in box at court house. This replaced in person voting for H and I as soon as it became an option.
In NM, I voted early in person at location less than a mile from my house. Never had to wait more than 20 minutes, even on a busy day. Most times the wait was under 5 minutes. Plentiful parking at the site. Early voting starts about 10 days before the election. 15 days prior if you vote at the county office.
In CA, I voted by mail. Received ballot in the mail and mailed it back. Checked in with the tracking app to see when my ballot was received.
In VA, I vote early in person. Although the polling site is close by (as it was in NM), the parking is extremely limited (and sometimes completely unavailable) and the wait times can be horrific–often well over an hour. There is a supposedly real-time wait tracker app for voting locations, but it’s often wildly inaccurate.
In VA - I voted in person until COVID, then I switched to early/mail. I love it. I never liked having all the people campaigning in front of the polling office. I always felt pressured to get in /out fast, even though there was never a line. With the paper, I can take as long as I’d like. I almost always drop it off at the registrar’s office which is one block from my office. I watch them verify everything is signed correctly and scan it in. I also turn in H’s ballot.
I’m an election moderator and can’t guarantee that I will be able to walk away from that assignment ON Election Day. I either vote early, or absentee. CT.
I voted in person before my state started sending mail in ballots to all registered voters. Until mobility became an issue for them, my parents voted in person for every election.
Here is our procedure. Receive ballots in the mail, pick a Saturday before the Election Day to vote, sit down with or without a beverage flipping through the pamphlets and internet to research and debate obscure local candidates, fill in the circles, package up the ballots into the return envelopes, and the next morning walk about 2-2.5 miles to the closest ballot box to drop them off.