Sarasota Congressional Election

My sister lives in a retirement community in Venice, which is in Sarasota County.  She was telling me last night that the great majority of people in her retirement community (she said 90%) simply refused to vote for either congressional candidate because they were, in her words, both so bad.  Given the fundamental inadequacy of electronic voting, i.e. the lack of a paper record, we will never know for sure whether this voter disgust and boycott fully accounts for the missing 18,000 votes.  (Absentee ballots are generally cast earlier in an election, which in the Sarasota case may have been before many voters were completely alienated by the two major candidates).  
I would like to see Common Cause take up the banner for elections by mail.  A recent letter to the editor in our local paper (Albany NY Times Union), written by the Oregon Secretary of State, described Oregon's very positive experience with voting by mail, wherein voter participation is greater at 1/3 the cost of the usual process.  Every registered voter in the state receives a ballot by mail, which is returnable by mail or at certain designated places.  One county had 13 inches of rain on election day. "Although many roads were impassable and parts of the county were inaccessible, seventy percent of the voters cast ballots."  How many election districts can say that, even under the best conditions?  It seems like a no-brainer to me.  The full text of Secretary of State Bradbury's letter is viewable at http://www.home.nycap.rr.com/edilgen/bradburyletter.html

Ed Dilgen
Glenmont, NY