Governor Gregoire thinks the state needs an earlier deadline for mail-in ballots, since close races can remain unresolved days after Election Day.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010237920_webvoting09.html

Isn’t Election Day purely arbitrary, anyway? What difference would it make to impose an earlier, yet similarly arbitrary deadline? Ballots have to be counted, either way. Someone wins, someone loses, either way. She says ‘The people deserve to know’… why?

Is the apparent right of state citizens to know voting results so important that we should risk confusing voters on when they need to get their ballots in? If we add another deadline, it simply makes the actual Election Day moot for mail-in voters. Essentially, all of us mail-in people would have a new ‘Election Day’, and then we’d have to wait just as long as we do now to hear the results. The only difference I see is that we’d be getting our results the same day that everyone else in the country has their voting deadline.

The governor’s push poses too many risks for the relatively insignificant benefit it promises.