By Christie Thompson, ProPublica

In his State of the Union address, President Obama returned to a point he'd made on election night: The need to do something about long voting lines. Obama announced his plan for a commission to "improve the voting experience in America."

But often missing from discussions about how to make voting easier is the rapid expansion of absentee balloting. Letting people vote from home means fewer people queuing up at overburdened polling places. So why hasn't vote-by-mail been heralded as the solution?

When it comes to absentee and mail-in voting, researchers and voting rights advocates aren't sure the convenience is worth the potential for hundreds of thousands of rejected ballots.

Although Oregon and Washington are the only two states to conduct elections entirely by mail, absentee voting has expanded rapidly nationwide. Since 1980, the number of voters using absentee ballots has more than tripled. Roughly one in five votes is now absentee.

Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow voters to request an absentee ballot for any reason, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That's up from the six states that did so in 1988, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

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The residents of what is likely to be the presidential election’s most critical swing state are already casting their votes. With a few days to go, 1.6 million people in the state have already voted for president. About a million of the votes cast have been absentee ballots, which are now at an 85 percent return rate for those mailed out. “Voting has gone smoothly in Ohio, and we expect that trend to continue through the close of the polls on Election Day,” Secretary of State Jon Husted said. A statewide poll released Saturday found Obama leading Romney by a significant six points in the Buckeye State.