To everyone who already voted: thanks!

By Kelley Meck of Portland, Oregon. Kelley is a campaign professional turned law student at Lewis & Clark Law School.

Here's the simple reason why you should vote as soon as you can: the sooner you vote, the more you help campaigns save time & trouble talking to you, and focus on undecided and maybe voters and get good information to them and remind them to vote. That's good for Democrats, often, because it means more people vote overall, but it is also good for small-d democracy, because it means a wiser allocation of effort spent creating an informed and engaged citizenry to make choices for the future.

There's a side-benefit too. Once you vote, campaigns will focus their door-to-door efforts, phone-calls and mailers on folks who haven't voted yet.

You may ask, why do they call me? Why do they knock on my door? You were going to vote anyway, you say. Well, sure, maybe you were. But lots of people need reminding--that's just science. Literally, science: i.e. double-blind randomized studies conducted by scientists repeatedly find that more people vote when they are reminded in a personalized, one-on-one kind of way.

Here are some other things you can do to ensure a good turn-out this year:

1. Get excited. Excitement is contagious.
2. Remind yourself and others that millions of people are voting all across Oregon (not to mention the country). Everyone is doing it. Some are even doing it early.
3. Volunteer with a campaign near you to help build excitement. For one, there are several very competitive state senate races this year.

Oct. 17, 2014 Posted in guest column.