Absent-Minded on Absentee Ballots

by Rob Mintzes    January 12, 2008

I'd like to address the Westchester County Board of Elections. I wouldn't say that they're incompetent, but right now I'm thinking they're a little dumb. As a registered voter in Westchester who attends school in Broome County, I need an absentee ballot in order to vote (look, I'm not driving 3 hours in both directions just to vote--it's not worth the gas burn--and I'm not registering in Broome because there aren't many local candidates I care about).

So, I sent out a ballot request on Thursday, clearly marking the address I would be at in Binghamton and the dates I would be there. I expected to see the ballot in my mailbox upon my return to Binghamton a couple of weeks from now, so imagine my surprise when I saw my ballot two days after sending out the request. I figured that they wanted to send me the ballot before I headed back up to school, but I found it odd.Regardless, I filled out the ballot and will send it out on Monday.

Here's where I start on the negative. My brother, who attends school in Connecticut, sent out his ballot request a couple of days before I did, and he has yet to receive anything from the BOE. How does that work? This wouldn't be the first time the BOE slipped up. When I requested a ballot last year, they sent out two: one to my address in Binghamton and one to my brother--with my name and HIS address on the envelope. When he requested the ballot, it was sent to our address in Westchester.

When I first started voting absentee in the '04 Presidential election, the BOE did a pretty good job of getting things right, but it seems that after the Midterms, something took a dive. I'm almost afraid that my vote will be counted wrong...I'm sure there's probably someone out there who is dumb enough to screw up reading and counting a paper ballot.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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