1. Yes, there’s a loss of the secret ballot in some cases. I don’t worry about it much, though, since you’re talking about a handful of dominionists. I would note that your argument has parallels with one of the central arguments against women’s sufferage — that the husband would command the wife to vote his way. But I do acknowledge the secret ballot is less secret. If you wanted a truly secret ballot, you’d ban the absentee ballot outright. (And that would include sub ballots. I mean, a CO could well insinuate to subordinates that voting against the CO’s wishes would result in things becoming very uncomfortable.)

2. This argument, to me, doesn’t wash. Take those judge races way downballot. Half the time I have no idea what to think about the candidates. Their voter guide paragraphs are basically “I want to be a judge” and “I’m a good lawyer, see?” In all likelihood I will never actually encounter one of these judges. Should I disqualify myself from voting because I am underinformed? In general, I don’t think there should be an “effort” threshold to determine whether someone votes or not. The process should be simple. Throwing up barriers, anyway, disenfranchises people who may not be able to make the effort due to physical reasons (the elderly, the infirm, people with physical disabilities). Given how we treat that group as a whole in this society, I think closing off their voice entirely is a disaster waiting to happen.

3. The risks are very small. Ballots are trackable. If you didn’t get yours, they’ll reissue it and void the previous one. Signature matching is honestly better than most forms of voter ID — it’s awfully hard to forge a signature when you have no idea what it looks like, where forging a driver’s license is far easier (see any college campus). OTOH, how many “missing ballot boxes” have we had in the last 10-15 years? Hell, there was a case of someone leaving a ballot box in their car for days in some major election recently. And mail-in ballots beat electronic machines without paper trails (as seen in 11 states) in terms of safety.

4. The advantage to mailers with a ballot is minimal. It’s all about timing, and you can’t time it perfectly. What if you lay it aside for two weeks and only get to it when that day’s mail comes in with a different set of fliers? It’s all random chance. If there really were an advantage, then your mail would be nothing but fliers with the ballot.

5. This is a fault of Washington’s system. Oregon requires ballots to be 8pm day of the election, and they’re done counting 90% of the ballots by 11pm. I’m with you here that we need to fix this, but this isn’t a problem of mail-in ballots — this is the problem of a screwed up system.

6. An ounce of paper in a sunk cost delivery and return system, I would bet, is still environmentally better than having 3.8M people travel to the polls + all the setup/takedown of the polling places + volunteers, party observers, lawyers…. Remember, one reason we have vote by mail is it’s cheaper than the old polling place system.

I think the only good arguments against the current WA system are the possible erosion of the secret ballot and the postmark-based deadline. But the former doesn’t seem like a huge worry right now (I mean, no more company towns), and the latter is easily fixed with a law change or an initiative (get on it, Tim Eyman). OTOH, vote-by-mail lowers the convenience bar, is as safe as any absentee ballot, and is certainly less hackable than the other electronic systems. The novelty will wear off — Oregon’s sufferage rate has dropped consistently since mail ballots were introduced — but I think it’s a plenty efficient system and on the whole better than what people in Florida are going through today (long lines, buggy machines, not enough paper backups, some systems without any paper trail).