Two faces of all-mail election

The all-mail primary election next month is a pain in the rear — and pretty darned exciting, too.

The 44 Idaho county clerks enrolled in Migraine Management 101 can probably attest to the pain part more than the excitement part of that opening statement. They’d already been scrambling, trying to figure out how to man hundreds of polling places when a pandemic was only beginning to wreak havoc and the governor ordered citizens to stay the heck away from each other.

When a new order came down from the Great State of Ada last week, circumventing the Idaho Constitution and releasing clerks from polling place responsibilities for the May 19 primary, one dreaded door closed.

And another opened.

Kootenai County has cracked open the safe and ordered an unprecedented 60,000 absentee ballots, expecting massive participation in a primary election that in fact serves as the final test for many candidates. The logistics are unlike anything that’s been done here before.

The Press asked County Clerk Jim Brannon a question some of you might be wondering: Since this thing’s going to be all-mail, why doesn’t the county simply mail a ballot to every registered voter? That way, you save time — voters don’t need to request a ballot and have the county then mail it — and any additional mailing costs could be offset by not having to pay poll workers.

Brannon said the law specifically requires voters to request a ballot. But for those of us who wonder sometimes if the powers in office don’t want high turnout, he pretty well dispelled that by saying the state is paying for two mailers to connect prospective voters with an absentee ballot. One of those mailers might have landed in your mailbox already, and the other, Brannon said, should go out before long.

That second one, he said, will already have your name and other basic info on it. “All you have to do is send it in,” he said.

This election, you can request an absentee ballot right up to the minute polls normally would close: 8 p.m. May 19. You’ll have until 8 p.m. June 2 to have those filled-out ballots at the Elections Office.

Now, back to the second part of the opening sentence, the exciting part.

What if this all-mail experiment sets a record for voter participation in a primary? What if the convenience is high, the cost manageable and the results impressive? Then Idaho might be in for some interesting, invigorating discussions about improving voter participation, which would be one shaft of light through the dark coronavirus cloud.