Reply #3: Let me add another

[SheilaT]

"it depends" and you must know and have confidence in your state or municipality on this.

Here in Kansas we have advance voting both by mail, and by voting machines set up in the our county voter registration place. At least a third of ballots in my part of Kansas (Johnson County, which is a suburb of Kansas City, MO) are cast early. It means that campaigning is diminishingly effective the closer you get to election day. I found that out when I ran for office two years ago, and in the last three weeks kept on being told at the door that the person had already voted, and too bad, because if I'd only been there earlier, they'd have voted for me. I also did a mailing timed to arrive the day before election day, which again was bad timing.

For a lot of people around here, once they've voted by mail they'll never again deal with standing in line on election day. And at least in this county, all the mailed-in ballots are counted FIRST, before the voting machine counts, so your vote by mail here is counted. In general, there's a high degree of honesty here. And even though we have the Diebold machines, I did not hear confirmed stories of vote switching on the machine. Basically, this is such a Republican state, there's no need to fool with our machines.