A politically charged punk rock group once lampooned the American rallying cry as “Give me convenience or give me death.”

In a nation that has pioneered “drive-thru” service for everything from dinner to liquor to marriage to pharmaceuticals – and there’s a continuum for you – it is indeed a challenge to imagine any sphere in which pampered consumers might not demand the right to save a few steps.

Convenience – consumer driven, in the truest sense –

toddles forward this coming week in the halls of the county elections division. On Monday, the Kitsap County Commissioners will consider a resolution by which to establish mail-only balloting for all elections beginning this fall. Polling places would be eliminated, save for a token drop-box in each community for the hapless few who find themselves short a stamp come Tuesday.

Yes, you can express your political will without going farther than the mailbox, for those days when even driving is too much effort.

Of course, resolution proponents (including county Auditor Karen Flynn) note that for all intents and purposes, all-mail balloting is already here. Some 75 percent of Kitsap voters are permanently registered for what used to be called “absentee” ballots, even though they have no intention of being absent. The evidence is in the pitiable trickle of folks who wander through polling halls most election days; even last November, when throngs of islanders lined up outside the Playhouse to express their preference for president, mail-ins numbered

78 percent; the average since 2001 is 86 percent.

In a recent column for the Washington Post, Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury – whose Beaver State brethren blazed the vote-by-mail trail in the 1980s, and abandoned polling places altogether in 1998 – praised the system. Bradbury hailed the system’s “automatic paper trail,” and the ease of collecting ballots at a single, centralized location – the courthouse – rather than at halls scattered around the county. Turnout, or rather, “participation” tends to be higher with all-mail balloting, particularly in off-year or special elections. Plus it’s cheaper, and it’s easier to manage.

Bradbury makes a convincing case, and it’s hard to imagine that our county commissioners won’t agree and establish all-mail balloting in Kitsap, for good. The majority of citizens clearly prefer making the least effort possible.

It does seem a shame to abandon an institution as long-standing and meaningful as the trek to the polling place; it is a civic event, a symbolic coming together of the electorate to express its collective preference for governance. It’s a display you’d think more Americans would treasure and take immense pride in making. But they don’t, and it’s time to acknowledge that and move on.

We have to confess that we’ll miss the little “I Voted” sticker, although maybe the elections office can include one with each ballot. We’ll also miss the visits to the local grade school or American Legion Hall, and seeing the senior volunteers who dutifully man the polls. We’ll miss the ritual, the experience, the thrill of “going” to vote on election day, lost to a system that makes casting a ballot no different than paying a bill.

But we surrender. Relegate the polling station to the ashcan of American history.

Give us convenience – and be quick about it.