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Columns that appear on election day are always tricky to write. People who read editorial and op-ed pages are people who care about election processes and outcomes. But there's no outcome yet to discuss, and any discourse on process must be conducted delicately; simple decency demands that if you're writing about a candidate, she should have time to respond.
Further complicating these off-year elections, at least hereabouts, is this mail-in ballot system.
Some people find them more convenient. I sure don't. Our polling place, St. Joseph Church, is right across the street. I can look out the front door, find a time when there aren't many cars, walk over and vote. That's it.
Contrast that to fetching the ballots from the mail box, keeping them around until you've figured out how you're going to vote, wondering about the environmental effects of wasting 99.9 percent of those silly little pencils, then sealing and signing, then wondering if we should trust the Postal Service to get them to the courthouse on time or, more likely, go up there and deposit them directly, just to be sure they got where they're supposed to go by the time they're supposed to get there.
There there's the possibility of fraud. The judges at
real elections are neighbors who know you, so it would be
difficult to vote early and often.
But with these mail-in ballots, well, my daughters are off in college but maintain residency here -- so they get ballots that, if I were inclined to fraud, I could just cast myself.
Some friends mentioned that their former next-door neighbor, a fellow deceased since last spring, duly received a ballot in the mail last month -- apparently we've simplified the process of voting the graveyard. Shouldn't you need at least a few ward heelers and a political organization?
And there's the extended voting period -- the ballots
arrive about two weeks before they're due at the courthouse
(a misnomer in many jurisdictions, since the courts do not
sit in the same building as the county clerk's office, but
county office building
sounds horrible in comparison
to the traditional courthouse
).
Nobody knows when people vote. Is it worth a candidate's trouble to campaign during the last fortnight? Should the candidate schedule all campaigning before the ballots go into the mail, and run the risk of vanishing from public perception? As charges and countercharges fly, and as more information about the issues on the ballot is developed, might one wish he had voted differently if he voted early? This extended voting period isn't fair to voters or candidates.
But I sometimes hear that these mail-in ballots are cheaper and easier than holding a real election. If a representative democracy is too miserly to operate polling places, I have to wonder about its priorities. As for ease, the county clerks and election judges are our employees, there to serve us -- we should listen to their ideas about how to simplify the process, of course, but the final decision should be ours. They're our servants, not our masters.
So now our elections, once conducted in a specific time and a specific place, have transcended those limitations, with results I fear to speculate about.
Here, it's fairly hard to indulge in speculation even about the outcome. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the bond issue for a new middle school will probably pass, since the school board finally put it in town where kids can walk to it, and it's their third or fourth try -- it usually takes a while for Salida to approve something new. Plus, there's organized support for the school, and no organized opposition.
Then again, there's no organized opposition to the new 100-bed jail, while just about everybody who matters in Chaffee County is for it. Even so, I figure that this is only the first try, and they'll need to make three or four efforts before they get one approved.
The school-board races are the usual -- one candidate per district. City elections are usually like that too, but this time around, it's a pretty hot race.
Although it's non-partisan, it seems to have divided into two major factions: The Continued Gentrification Party vs. Slumlords Against Progress (my camp, in case you're curious).
Without poll results, I use yard signs to get a sense of
the election. Based on that, the Slumlord party seems to be
doing pretty well, ahead about four to one in the sign
category. So does the school bond -- many Vote Yes for
Schools,
some of them even in yards that don't belong
to teachers, but nothing visible against it. The jail,
despite generating lively discussions, doesn't seem to have
inspired any signs one way or the other.
Well, we'll know tomorrow. And we'll have had to endure weeks of election days, instead of merely one, for the outcome. That's progress?
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