As noted earlier, one of the advertising gimmicks proposed for marketing vote-by-mail to skeptical poll voters was:
Flyers featuring VIPs who are converting to VBM which we can hand out at special events, booths, public meetings, etc.I'm not sure if they ever created those flyers. But I did find e-mails from VIPs who reported problems with voting by mail.
* Ron Sims' wife requested a ballot online, but didn't receive it, so Ron had to complain to Jim Buck.
* State Rep. Mark Miloscia (D-Federal Way), a member of the House committee that drafts elections laws, wrote that his wife's ballot was wrongly rejected in the primary because of "signature problems".
* Former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn didn't receive her absentee ballot ... for the third time.
The following data isn't in the e-mails as such, but I checked the voter database for King County VIPs who voted at their trustworthy polling place and weren't inspired to take part in the Elections Office's "Try It You'll Like It" vote-by-mail promotion. (the database info is from January 2007 and includes the November 2006 election, but not the Seattle mail-only Viaduct election)
Among the die-hard poll voters are:
* Former County Council Chairman Larry Phillips, co-sponsor of the Ordinance to force all county voters to vote by mail and author of the op-ed "Done right, vote-by-mail will improve county elections". Phillips hadn't voted by mail since the county screwed up his ballot in November 2004.
* Current County Council Chairman Larry Gossett.
* County Administrative Officer Paul Tanaka, the bureaucrat who is the immediate supervisor of the current Elections Director.
* Assistant County Executive Sheryl Whitney, Paul Tanaka's boss and Ron Sims' right-hand woman.
So if the two bureaucrats directly above the Elections Office in the county foodchain and the two most recent County Council Chairmen don't trust their own ballots to the county's vote-by-mail operation, why should the rest of us?
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 16, 2007 11:55 AM | Email This"So if the two bureaucrats directly above the Elections Office in the county foodchain and the two most recent County Council Chairmen don't trust their own ballots to the county's vote-by-mail operation, why should the rest of us?"
Well, duh, because they said we should.
Posted by: ewaggin on May 16, 2007 12:24 PMI have no indication of whether or not my local polling office will be open or not.
And, as stated previously in another post, I will NOT be voting in this state any more if the ONLY choice I have is a mail-in vote. It cannot be trusted.
Anybody have the definitive answer? Stefan?
Posted by: Elmo on May 16, 2007 04:10 PMAnd I like the fact that they are too cheap to even use Business Reply Mail. Sure it's only 41 cents, but a real business would do it. (And isn't forcing me to pay for a stamp to vote in a Federal election an indirect poll tax in violation of the 24th Amendment? Again, another reason to use prepaid emvelopes.)