By Doug Bohn, Victor
After attending multiple County Commissioner meetings recently about “mail-in ballots,” it has become blatantly evident that there are vast misunderstandings on both sides of the aisle about how different mail-in voting is from the “Absentee ballot” so many of us have participated in. In fact, the ONLY thing these two processes have in common is the U.S. Post Office. That’s it!
The process to obtain an absentee ballot is the same as if you had gone to the election office to vote in person. You must appear, show proof of I.D. with address matching your address on record with the election office, fill out a request for absentee ballot and sign the request which the election office then compares to the signature on your voter registration form. If your elections office does not follow this process it’s your fault. You allowed apathy to steal the integrity from your election process. Sorry, but sometimes the truth sucks. IF you move or incur any other changes you must notify the elections office immediately of those changes. This is the opportunity crooked people take advantage of if it is not done. But getting the signatures to match is the tough part.
On the other hand, to obtain a “Mail-in” ballot you simply had to vote in the last General Election. That’s it, simply had voted. The last General Election could have been up to four years ago. The election office mass-mails ballots to EVERY registered voter at their last known address on the rolls that IS NOT REGISTERED FOR ABSENTEE.
This is how for instance, my neighbor, who is renting what had been the guest house, received seven ballots in the mail during the June primary vote cycle. Only one was her legitimate absentee ballot. The other SIX were for the owner and family, whose home had burned down three years ago and he did not bother to notify the elections office when he moved out of state. Fortunately, my friend did the right thing and returned the wayward ballots to the elections office, explaining the scenario, allowing the records to be corrected. You gotta ask yourself, how many people would actually do that right thing. In addition, I live in a very sparsely populated county in a pretty sparsely populated state. How many of these scenarios occur in heavily populated areas and states?
I trust you understand now that “mail-in” voting IS NOT “what you’ve been doing for years.”