Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

So I got my mail-in ballot from Marsha Wharff the other day and I find several tings upsetting about it - other than that I am really, really angry that she has eliminated my polling place in Hopland. An entire town now has no place to vote.
So the first thing that comes to my mind is this: I am picking up the mail. My ballot and my husband's ballot are both there. What's to prevent me from simply voting for my husband - or he voting for me - and sending them both in? How would Marsha know he hadn't voted? She'd say, oh, but we would look at the signature. Well how many husbands and wives have signed checks, paychecks, IRS forms, credit card applications etc for each other and know each other's signatures? Or, how many husbands and wives will simply sign something the other says to sign. I could say to my husband, honey, sign this envelope or you won't be able to vote this year. I could say I'm submitting our mail-in applications. He'd sign it. It's not a ballot, it's an envelope. How would he know that I am now going to take his ballot, fill it out my way and mail it in. If he was a Republican about to vote in a presidential election, hey I'd be considering it.
And, on the subject of signatures, there's a woman who lives in Ukiah who checked back with Marsha's office after she voted in the last election to see if her ballot was received and her vote counted and she was told that her vote was not counted because her signature didn't match what they had on record. They didn't look at any of the many signatures she had placed on the polling place check-in sheets when she had voted in all the recent elections. No, they compared her signature to the one they had on the voting registration card she had filled out some 15 or more years previously. Whose signature at age 25 is the same at 40 or 45?
It's ludicrous and proves once more that mail-in voting has lots of pitfalls.
Next, how about the fact that your ballot goes into an envelope and you sign the back of the envelope and mail it in. Therefore, your signature and your name and address are sitting out there for anyone to view and copy throughout the process. Identity theft experts tell you these days not even to sign the back of your credit cards any more because someone who got hold of one could copy your signature. But let's all sign our ballots and send them through the mails to a public office where any number of people can look at them. Also, the ballot requires you to put an actual address on the public space of the ballot envelope, a PO Box is not allowed even if that's your official mailing address. Ask any police officer or sheriff''s deputy how he or she feels about that. Not to mention the thousands of people everywhere who use PO Boxes because they don't want their address out in public. I suspect thousands of people do not submit their vote because they don't want to put their physical address on an envelope that is going to be milling around out in public.
And since when do I have to pay to vote? It used to be free for me to go to my polling place. Now it's going to cost me 39 cents to vote. Sure Marsha says I can drop my ballot at her office at her convenience during her office hours any old time. Thanks.
Then, let's look at all the ways this mail-in ballot can be voided by Marsha because you didn't exactly follow the directions:
1. She doesn't agree that this is your signature.
2. You didn't use black ink.
3. You didn't fill your circle in entirely or you filled it in too much. At a polling place that ballot would automatically be rejected in time for you to do it over. Not with a mail system.
4. You "cut" the receipt at the top of the ballot off instead of tearing it at the perforated seam. Keep in mind that there's a dotted line across the top of the ballot that is the international symbol for "cut here."
5. If you want to write in a candidate you have to do it on a line that requires you to write letters no higher than 1/8 of an inch. Good luck with that.
6. If you make a mistake and need a new ballot, you have to call Marsha's office and use a special phone code that is nowhere on the ballot or even on the envelope you will use to send your ballot in. No, the special phone code is printed only on the envelope the ballot came in, which you probably threw away long ago.
7. Then, even if you have that number and want a new ballot, you have to mail your spoiled ballot to Marsha in time before the election for her to send you a new one. So, if you're filling out your ballot the day before the election and make a boo-boo, you're sunk.
8. You sign or initial the ballot itself by mistake.
All in all, this is a bad system, which should be available only for people who really can't get to a polling place. Marsha, thank goodness, is retiring at the end of the year, and I hope that whoever replaces her in the interim will go about reopening polling places for the 2008 presidential election and I guarantee that whoever runs for County Clerk in the next election will not get my vote unless they are willing to reopen polling places throughout the county.