I live in cutting-edge Washington State, where we are at the tippy-tip of the spear when it comes to innovations in ballot-collecting procedures — I mean maximizing accessibility of voting for persons who choose to vote.  The old walk to the local elementary school to mark and cast ballots, followed by donuts and coffee in a flag-festooned school lounge, has been upgraded to the highest levels of 21st-century technological advancement.

Vote by mail (which you may have known by its dead name, the absentee ballot) had long been available by request for Washingtonians of circumstances including illness, advanced age, and military deployment.  In 1983, vote by mail (VBM) was re-imagined into a more inclusive process wherein special elections could be conducted via all mail-in ballots.

In 2005, new legislation permitted every county in the state the option to choose mail-in-only voting in all elections.  Apparently, this choosing thing was meant to be temporary, as shortly became clear.  Pierce County (in the western part of the state, south of Seattle) found itself an anomaly among our 39 counties.  Pierce was the last county that persisted in the anachronistic arrangement of hosting a type of secure physical location for that most iconic exemplar of democratic freedom in our constitutional republic, casting a ballot.

Pierce County was not demanding that other counties abandon the convenience, the expanded timeframe, and the reduction in elections staff that vote-by-mail elections afforded state and local officials.  Pierce County was not posting anti-VBM screeds on social media accounts with cartoon frog avatars.  Pierce County merely continued to do what Pierce County (and any other Washington State county that chose to) was permitted to do.  But if VBM was good enough for 38 counties, there was no reason Pierce County should not experience the inclusivity afforded by the consensus fortified by new legislation.

In 2011, the state Legislature closed the door on the polling place and the voting booth.  Citizens identifying as voters were provided with one choice: the mailbox or the dropbox.  All citizens of Washington would mark ballots in locations of their own choosing.  Once marked, our ballots were to be secured within two envelopes, each sealed via moistened flap.  The ballot, once enclosed in Security Envelope, would be placed into the slightly larger Return Envelope, which is then signed and dated by the voter (or a witness if the voter is unable to sign).  The security envelope featured 1/3” diameter air holes, similar to the cardboard pet carriers the local animal shelter provides with your new kitten.

The enclosed voter instructions explain how the security envelope makes possible a two-step procedure able to ensure a secret ballot.  First, the name/signature on the outer envelope could be confirmed to be that of a registered voter.  Then the ballot, within its still-sealed security envelope, could be separated from the identifying information, opened, and counted.

Several years ago, there was an update to ballot security features.  The archaic bastion of ballot secrecy, the security envelope, had been re-imagined as the Optional Security Sleeve.  This was a form of stationery I’d never before encountered.  While resembling an envelope, this sleeve was a full half-inch shorter than the ballot in both length and width.  Instead of being open on only one of the long sides, it was open on one long side and one short side.  Though there’s no mechanism for actually sealing the contents within, air circulation is not endangered, as the new security sleeve retains the air holes of its predecessor.

I’m sure it’s difficult for those American citizens and voters living outside the vanguard of forward-thinking election innovation that is Washington State to envision any way that our imagineers of election reconfiguring machinations could come up with an election modification that would surprise even a Washington resident of many decades.  Yet somehow, from deep within the bowels of its election bureaucracy, Washington State managed to squeeze out a voting option that I never saw coming.

Are you ready?  Hang on to your underpants.

The 2024 voter’s manual contains instructions for use of a specially developed option to assist voting residents with disabilities in casting their ballots.  The population that once had to request accommodation in the form of an absentee ballot may now avail themselves of a new system to facilitate accessible marking and casting of ballots, with both independence and privacy.

This innovative, accessible voting system includes interface features such as a touch screen, jelly switches for those with dexterity issues, a sip-and-puff tube for voters with quadriplegia, and headphones for visually impaired voters to listen to the ballot.

The most unexpected part is that this innovation is housed in an actual physical location — a safe space, as it were.

That’s right, folks: in honor of the very population for which the absentee ballot had originally been established, our election bureaucracy has re-invented...the polling place.

Image: cagdesign via Pixabay, Pixabay License.