Sound Politics Public Blog: All-Mail Voting Protest Today in Snohomish County

September 19, 2006

All-Mail Voting Protest Today in Snohomish County

As the Herald noted in Tuesday's edition, we'll be at the county auditor's office at noon to vote in person, to protest the move to all-mail voting. You can also read more about some of the reasons behind the protest. See you there ...

Posted by pudge at September 19, 2006 12:16 AM | Email This

Comments

1. Well Pudge, I wasn't able to take your advice and vote in person. I did what I thought was the next best thing - I dropped off my ballot at a local collection center on Monday.

As of 10:30 pm Wednesday, SnoCo still hasn't acknowledged receiving my ballot. As a matter of fact, looking at the SoS site, from last night to tonight, SnoCo only counted 10,000 additional ballots - have you heard if they having troubles?

Several races have been declared and it really looks like my vote didn't count at all.

Next time, I will do it differently.

Posted by: SouthernRoots on September 20, 2006 10:38 PM

2. I talked at length with the Elections Manager, Carolyn Diepenbrock, on Tuesday. (Despite my disagreements with the County on all-mail balloting, we do get along well.) She told me they would not be done counting the mail ballots until (she believes) the middle of next week, so don't worry about your ballot until the Auditor says they're done.

I think the only races that have been declared are the ones they believe have no chance of being changed due to the yet uncounted ballots.

I may be an official party watcher in the counting room on Friday afternoon; if I am, I'll report back with any new information.

As to the local collection center, I heard from others who did the same thing. That's what I'd have done too if I couldn't have voted in person (indeed, before I knew they had ballot machines last spring, that was my plan ... well, actually, my plan was to drop off the ballot at the Auditor's office and demand that they check my ID).

I do plan to vote in person from now on, as long as they let us use the machines in-person; I just probably won't wait until election day. This isn't the last of it. Indeed, maybe we'll force the issue by having, every election day, hundreds, or thousands, of people show up over two weeks to vote in person. Wouldn't that be something?

Posted by: pudge on September 21, 2006 12:24 AM

3. Thanks for the info Pudge. They finally received my ballot. I'll have to make a better effort in November to make sure my vote counts on election day.

Posted by: SouthernRoots on September 21, 2006 11:19 AM