ballot problems

[cellio]

Here in Pittsburgh, voting by mail in 2020 and in this year's primary was smooth for me. Ballots were mailed in time, the process was smooth, tracking worked. Naturally I assumed that for the minor off-year election today, the same would be true. Boy was I wrong.

My ballot was spoiled on arrival. It had my name printed on it (uh, secret ballot anyone?) along with a bar code. It was printed across part of the ballot, obscuring some candidate names. There were no return envelopes, neither the secrecy envelope nor the outer one with identifying info (the one you mail). Just this misprinted ballot in an envelope sent to me.

I visited the URL printed on that envelope and submitted a support ticket. Crickets. Later I called the phone number listed there. When I finally reached a human, the person said "oh you've reached the state; you need your county". So I tried to track them down. No luck.

It was now a week before the election. No time for a replacement ballot to arrive and be received back. I looked up how to vote in person (and confirmed their Covid protocols).

I want to interject that the people at my polling place today were great. This isn't their fault. They did everything they could to deal with this problem not of their making.

I learned this morning that this ballot misprinting happened to other people too. Mine was the first case in my precinct at my polling place, so they had to look up the instructions for handling a surrendered mail-in ballot. I had brought everything I received, as instructed. I filled out the form. Then they saw in their documentation that I had to hand over the ballot and the two return envelopes. The return envelopes I never got. We all agreed that my name being printed right on the ballot ought to confirm my ID for validation purposes (that's why they want the outer envelope, where my name should have been printed), but we didn't feel safe relying on logic. This is government, after all.

They offered to escalate so I could vote now but said that could take a while -- how long could I wait? I was on my way to work (I now go to the office one day a week). Fortunately my workplace is flexible that way, but I still didn't have another hour to spend on this at the time. I considered leaving and coming back after work, but figured anybody who could help worked 9-4 or something like that and wouldn't be available anyway.

So I cast a provisional ballot. I'm assured it will be counted some days hence. I have a tracking number. This still feels very wrong.

Even though my vote will probably be counted, even though it probably doesn't make a difference this time, I feel disenfranchised. What happens in the mid-terms next year when people are more motivated to place hurdles in front of voters? What happens to voters who are likely targets (like immigrants) or have mobility challenges or who lack confidence in standing up for their rights? I'm a white professional in the heart of a very blue city (albeit in a purple state) who had the time and perseverance to try to chase this down after the bad ballot arrived. I have way more advantages than many, and I failed. What hope did others have?

The problem wasn't at the state level where most of the attention is, and it wasn't actual election tampering as far as I can tell. It was an error made by the county that affected an unknown number of people. Nobody's watching counties in all the election shenanigans. I'm in Allegheny County, not voter-suppression-ville. This was an accident, but I couldn't get it corrected.

Brr.

Comments

[fauxklore]

This sort of thing is why I think the idea of universal vote by mail is flawed. I feel far more confident voting in person- whether on Election Day or via early voting.

[madfilkentist]

When people make dubious claims of vote rigging, they distract attention from what's often a bigger problem: incompetence in running the process. What you ran into is outrageous, but it doesn't fit anyone's narrative of one faction grabbing power away from the other, so it's likely to get ignored.

[shewhomust]

This was an accident, but I couldn't get it corrected.

This. Anyone can make a mistake, the question is how well they deal with correcting it.

[hudebnik]

We were planning to vote absentee this time, but weren't pro-active about it. Then we received our non-partisan Voter Guides in the mail, listing not only the candidates and ballot initiatives, but the deadlines for things like applying to vote absentee -- which was two days before the Voter Guides arrived! Again, probably not partisan tampering but ordinary incompetence.

Fortunately, we now have early voting in person for a week or so before election day (that wasn't true until about five years ago). Unfortunately, it's at the County Courthouse, about two miles from our home, and we didn't get around to making the trip in that week. So we voted in person on election day, at the elementary school a few blocks from home, and everything went smoothly. There was somebody sitting in a chair on the sidewalk exactly the minimum distance from the election site, reminding people to vote for X for City Council, but otherwise no evidence of electioneering or shady business.