Ballots are in the hands of voters, and thousands of people already have made their choices.
A revolution in the election process has been launched in this corner of the country, and unless I miss my guess, it is likely to spread rapidly to other states. Oregon has abolished polling places. The public voted in 1998 to end the expense of running an election in hundreds of precincts and instead send out a ballot to every registered voter. Washington still gives its people a choice, but Ralph Munro, the retiring secretary of state, predicts that more than half the ballots will be cast by mail. The change is not without controversy.