Oregon is the only state in the Union that votes entirely by mail, and as NPR's Ina Jaffe reported last week, that's not only changing the way campaigns conduct their get-out-the-vote efforts, it also removes the tradition of the secret ballot entirely from Oregon's voting system. This week for Why Tuesday? Jacob Soboroff met with United States Postal Service Communications Program Specialist Larry H. Dozier to learn more about voting-by-mail.
For more: http://whytuesday.org
Here's NPR's Ina Jaffe report.
The justification for the statement "it also removes the tradition of the secret ballot entirely from Oregon's voting system" appears to be that an individual does not necessarily deposit or cast the ballot directly at a polling place. But the ballot envelope must be signed, and, as I remember it, a signature was all it took to vote at the polling place. There is a secrecy envelope inside the mailing envelope, and the two are separated as soon as the ballot is received (and checked for the signature). As noted, people can deposit the ballot envelope at numerous locations if they want to by-pass the postal system.
Note the increasing number of absentee ballots in other states. In Oregon, all ballots get counted and none are held for a later tabulation "if necessary." What is "lost" in Oregon is having to be at a particular place on a specific day within certain times, no matter what the weather or other obligations do to interfere.
People who might tend to vote as a block cannot be threatened to prevent them going to the polling place and do not have to stand in deliberately created long lines to discourage voting. Voter suppression is much more difficult with vote by mail.
Secret ballot? Not an issue as I see it. With the wonders of new electronic voting, my ballot might be secret if I voted at a terminal, but it also might not be counted for my choices. Voter fraud in Oregon is pretty much a one-vote-at-a-time concern.