A follow up to earlier today, I was poking around trying to find out what the savings were when Thurston County went to vote by mail back in 2005. This is as close to a definitive answer that I could find:

There are obvious advantages to make the switch.

– Cost savings. Wyman estimates the county could save $400,000 in poll-site costs by going to an all-mail election.

So, if 100,000 people voted in Thurston County during each election, it would only cost $41,000 to pay for postage. This is of course assuming the county couldn’t get some kind of bulk mail rate, which is sort of obvious that they would.

Why are we even talking about this, why don’t they just do it?