My only complaint about our mail-in ballots...

... is that I miss the little "I voted!" sticker. That tiny little flag sticker granted me with a feeling of superiority for at least a couple hours, as I sneered down on people walking the streets without stickers. Bah! Those people don't value our democracy!

Okay, maybe not.

But folks, with our unique vote-by-mail system, it's not enough to register, it's not enough to rant on a weblog, and it's not enough to sit down and fill in all the little bubbles on the ballot form. You actually have to make sure that the ballot reaches its destination in time to be counted. For those of us in Benton County, it means that the ballot must either make it to the courthouse or one of the official drop boxes by 8 p.m. this Tuesday. You can't mail it Tuesday afternoon and hope the postmark saves you. Your vote will not be counted.

It is probably too late to safely put the ballot in the mail, unless you take it directly to a branch of the post office before the end of the business day on Monday. True, mail generally only takes a single day to get from one house to the next in town, but if you miscalculate the time the mail carrier comes, you miss out. But you do have other options. You can take the ballot directly to the courthouse, or you can drop your ballot off at one of these convenient locations. Two of them, the drop box outside Wells Fargo in the Winco shopping center and the one behind the courthouse on 5th Street, can be accessed 24 hours a day.

As of Friday afternoon, 36% of Benton County voters had already returned their ballots. If you're in that other 64%, please make it your priority to turn that ballot in today or tomorrow. Don't wait until the last minute, because we all know that life is unpredictable.