Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

I got a call this morning from a local reader who was very upset about mail-in voting. Like the rest of us who have been prohibited from voting at a polling place, this woman got her mail-in ballot late last week. She voted and sent it back. Then, this week she gets the official State of California proposition summary explanation booklet and believes she voted the wrong way on the Indian gaming propositions. Now she's very upset that her vote is all wrong.
It raises another important question about the problem of mail-in voting: how can a county clerk send out ballots to be voted before all the official information has been distributed? This is not a case of a voter casting a mail in ballot early and then going to a political forum or reading a newspaper article and finding out something she disn't know about a candidate (which is a big problem with mail in voting already). This is one branch of government not paying attention to what another branch is doing, resulting in more voters losing faith in our system of elections.
Some of you may have heard my hour-long interview with our new county clerk Susan Ranochek on KZYX last week. Unfortunately, her attitude is that mail in voting is great, that it brings a higher turnout (although she admits voter registration is dropping in this county but she doesn't attribute mail-in voting to that) and that if you're worried about voting too early, then just keep your ballot to the very end. She also says the only input she's had so far in her new post is that people love mail in voting.
So, first of all, those of us who hate mail in voting should start calling and writing her right away. She needs to know that people want their polls back.
Second, the people in Covelo should demand equal treatment with the rest of the county. Everywhere in the county except Covelo, you can drop a ballot off at a polling place somewhere (although it may not be in your hometown). If you live in Covelo, that means driving all the way into Willits by 8 p.m. election night. Ranochek says - as did her predecessor Marsha Wharff - that it's not a problem for Covelo since they can drop their ballots if they wish, at the post office in Covelo by postal closing time, 5 p.m., and she sends people out to pick them up. That means that people in Covelo have three fewer hours than everyone else in the county to vote. ( I suspect there are other remote areas where this probably also holds true.)
Third, the county clerk ought to put a clear notice on all mail ballots that they may get more official information from the state of California about what's on their ballot in the coming days and should hold off voting until then. The county should know exactly what date the state plans to send out its voting booklet and make sure that the mail ballot tells the county voter when to expect that booklet.
Fourth, Ranochek makes the same claims that Wharff did that mail in balloting relieves the county from having the complications of having to have different ballots for different people at the polls. This is a smokescreen For instance, I live in Hopland, but I do not live in the Hopland Public Utilities District. Therefore I get a ballot that does not include matters dealing with the HPUD. When I went to the polls, the poll worker would look up my name, know that I was to get a ballot without the HPUD stuff on it and that's the one I got. In the 18 years I have lived in Hopland, not once was I handed a ballot that had HPUD matters on it by mistake. Eliminating polls does not eliminate the need to print different ballots for all these different people. The mail-in balots have to be uniquely printed for each separate voter's local water or fire district too. It only means that the county clerk's office - with no evidence at all - decided it does not trust poll workers to figure it out.
Call Susan Ranochek today and tell her you want your polling place back. The longer we agree to do without them, the harder it will be to put them back.Call her at 463-4376 or 463-4371.