If you're like me and you pay most of your bills electronically, finding a stamp in order to mail in your ballot is a pain in the ass. And the fact that King County doesn't give you a mail-in ballot with prepaid postage feels like an attempt to marginalize young and/or poorer voters—even if that isn't the intent. I don't have a habit of buying stamps like my parents do, because I hardly ever use them.

The Bay Area's Santa Clara County recently switched to prepaid postage, saying in a statement, "We hope that, by providing prepaid postage on vote by mail ballots, we will make it easier for busy residents to vote.”

But prepaid postage isn't in the cards in Seattle, according to Nancy Standifer, a King County Elections spokesperson. That's because technically, without voters affixing a stamp to a ballot, there's no postmark, and therefore no way to verify the ballot was mailed by election day. She says the office may revisit the idea of offering prepaid postage. But for now, it's not a policy they're actively pursuing.

All that said, Standifer did confirm what Goldy wrote two years ago: There's an unofficial policy of honoring ballots that arrive without postage, even though the corner of the envelope says "postage required." The key is that the ballots have to arrive. And if you drop a ballot in a mailbox without a stamp, you're rolling the dice on the generosity of the postal service, though Standifer says, "They know when they see those [ballots without stamps], they go ahead and push 'em through the system."

"It's not something that we promote because it's not fiscally responsible," Standifer says. But is your stamp-free ballot likely to be counted if it arrives at King County Elections, assuming it gets there in time? "The answer is yes."

(Still, if you do have a stamp, use it. Goldy said a reader wrote to him complaining that his stamp-less ballot didn't go through.)

So drop your ballot in the mail without a stamp if you're feeling lucky. Or, if you want a guaranteed way to vote without a stamp, take your ballot to a ballot box.

Oh, and here's who to vote for.