Personally, I'd like to see absentee ballots done away with, except for the military, and allow people to vote early by going to the county registrar's office and leaving their sealed ballot there. It's time to put a stop to passing out ballots like cheap newspaper shopper coupons.
If some poor soul is disenfranchised by such a perverse confluence of events that he is unable to cast a vote, then that's a flaw to live with that's preferable to maintaining a system that almost provides for the theft of elections by those least qualified to hold office. Voter fraud is such a direct attack on our system that I can think of no valid reason why the death penalty should not be applied to those who practice it; God knows I have enough friends who ostensibly died to provide us this right, and to punish those who would try to deprive us of it would be both poetic and just.