Every vote counts. Or at least, mine does.
  • Every vote counts. Or at least, mine does.

So on Wednesday, Dom and I dropped our ballots in the mail, mine without postage and a return address, to test the unpublicized policy within election offices to accept mail-in ballots postage due. Yesterday I checked the King County Elections Ballot Tracker page and was pleased to find that my ballot was received and verified.

Yay! My perfect voting record remains intact!

My experiment in postage-free voting was described in the comment thread as "a dick move" and an exhortation of laziness: "You can, as I did, drop your ballot off at any number of locations for perfectly free," wrote slog commenter jath. But I think both commenters miss the point.

In fact, there are only three ballot drop boxes in Seattle proper—at the King County Administration Building, the Ballard Library, and Magnuson Park—plus two mobile drop box vans on the UW campus and at West Seattle Stadium during the final few days of the election. It is not a short drive or walk to a ballot drop box for the vast majority voters... certainly further than their old polling place was. So the postal service is by far the preferred alternative.

And yet, if you're like me, you don't have a stamp handy because you don't mail anything anymore. Anything. All my bills and correspondence are handled electronically. The last time I dropped anything in the mail was probably my ballot for the November, 2011 election.

So while I don't recommend mailing your ballot without a stamp just for the sake of saving 45 cents (there's still a chance it won't be delivered), I wanted to demonstrate that not having a stamp is no excuse for not voting. Grab the SECB cheat sheet, fill out your ballot, and drop it in the mail. Stamp or no stamp.

Better to mail in your ballot postage due than not at all.