Our early voting is the same as voting on Election Day. A touchscreen machine. You show your id, get a ticket to feed into the machine, make your sections on the screen. Then it makes you review your selections before hitting “submit” - it spits out your ticket. Then walk over to another machine and feed your ticket in to officially cast your vote.
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All of our ballots, early and regular, are paper. We fill in a rectangle. When finished, we feed the ballot into a scanner. If there are any issues, the scanner will spit it back out. An election official will explain possible reasons for errors & give the voter another ballot.
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Early voting here is the same as voting election day. The voter checks in with a poll worker. Their name is found on the voter registration list. They are given a ballot, go to a privacy booth where they bubble in their choices. Then they go to the tabulator (another poll worker is there) and put their ballot in the tabulator. A screen shows that their ballot has been done (and says thank you). Voter gets an I voted sticker.
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@thumper1 thats exactly the process I followed yesterday at early voting.
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I voted early, all Washington State is by mail. I put it in the ballot box, and I love how they text me…..your ballot is on the way, we’ve received your ballot, verified your signature, your vote is counted!
No sticker, though. Boo hoo.
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Is the ticket it gives you effectively your ballot marked with your selections (in both human and machine readable form)?
Yes. You can technically Review your selections on your screen and on your card once printed -it looks like this
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I read that The Pope requested an absentee ballot to vote in this election
The comment was if the Pope can make the time to vote so can you! And that it’s a new type of catholic guilt.
Which made me laugh
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Reminder that political commentary is not permitted. Please limit your answers to the OP’s question. TIA
Not voting early here. Will vote on Election “Day.”
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My husband and I voted today. He works a night shift tonight and day shift on Tuesday (Election Day) so this was convenient. All early voting is in our town hall, a lovely historic building. There was no wait, but a steady stream of voters, all older than me (50s).
Here we check-in with ID, get a paper ballot to bubble in and then feed it into the machine at the end.
I currently live in a solidly blue state so we don’t have too many political ads or knocking on doors. But within the last 4 years I have lived in both WI and NC which are heavily contested.i am getting texts and emails every day reminding me to vote…despite responding STOP!
Hard not to feel like my vote would “count” a little more in those states! 
But I know if I showed up in person my voter registration there is canceled. I wish the databases texting me knew that…
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Solidly blue state here, but the amount of mail and the number of texts and calls drives me nuts! 
Especially mail. How many acres of trees have been slaughtered for this nonsense?!
We will walk our ballots to the box by the city hall on Sunday.
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Thanks for all the descriptions of early voting. I would love to have that available. I am not sure how they would handle it, as the library has to close on Election Day because it takes so much room. First you have to check in and sign your name in some enormous book, and there are 4 of them divided by alphabet.
Then you get a ballot and sit at a table with a privacy screen to complete your vote (fill in the bubbles). Then walk it over to a worker who mans the machine which looks like a big photo copier. You insert the ballot and watch the tally go up by one.
I imagine our township offices could make room for this but not the Rec center, church, libraries, YMCAs etc who would need their spaces for regular activities.
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The past couple of elections they have a very nice set up for early voting in our county. In 2024, it was a county building but now we vote at the courthouse.
Same stickers as you would get on Election Day. We told our friends how great the set up was so they voted early for the first time. Said it was very enjoyable.
I’m in a state that has some hotly contested election contests, the vitriol is so beyond. I will be glad for it to end. Be glad if you aren’t in such an area.
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In many states, you can download a sample ballot to pre-fill at home to use as a check list to bring with you to the voting location if you vote in person. Then all you need to do in the voting booth is copy from the sample ballot to the real ballot.
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Since we get the ballots mailed to us, along with alllll of the official voters pamphlets humanly possible, I get to sit on my couch and go through it all in real time.
No sample ballots here.
When WA had in-person voting, it was all in churches, schools, community centers. I dare say that they wouldn’t be able to have anything in schools any longer due to security issues.
My ballot was received and counted. I am all done with this election cycle!
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Do churches in your area have activities during the week? It works well for the church in our area that hosts early voting. Our library is spacious and has big meeting rooms. That’s where the early voting takes place, not in the stacks.
We have to say our name and address to the poll workers and they record it, but it’s not in a book. It’s entered into a database.
@zeebamom we have Election Day voting in the schools among other places. I think the kids usually have the day off now, but there were times in the past when they didn’t. I moved over to exclusively doing Early Voting so haven’t been to Election Day at the middle school in awhile.
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All schools started having teacher work days on Election Day many years ago. H’s gym was always the voting place. Before that, he’d have to have PE in the classroom (watch videos). He hated that. Even back then you didn’t want classes outside when all the strange cars/people were coming & going.
One of the kids sent me their sticker today. I immediately thought of this thread!
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