Feb 1st, Last Day to Mail-in California’s Absentee Ballots

http://www.redbluffdailynews.com/ci_8140340

So the ballot must be mailed the Friday before the vote on Tuesday. What happens to ballots that arrive on Wednesday but were mailed on Friday? Besides all the ballots that were cast for candidates that have now dropped out before the ballots were counted?

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-morrison31jan31,0,6237802.column 

Now aren’t you sorry?

Two or three weeks ago, maybe even earlier, you zipped through that absentee ballot, check check check, and hustled it off to the mailbox as if you were claiming a lottery prize. dcmaxversion = 9 dcminversion = 6 Do On Error Resume Next plugin = (IsObject(CreateObject(“ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.” & dcmaxversion & “”))) If plugin = true Then Exit Do dcmaxversion = dcmaxversion – 1 Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversion

And see what you missed? So much has happened since then that it’s barely the same election it was on Jan. 7. That was the first day you could vote by mail in what is now absurdly called the Feb. 5 primary — absurd because, analysts believe, at least half of California’s voters will have opted to vote by mail before then.

If you marked John Edwards’ or Rudy Giuliani’s name that political eternity ago, you blew your vote. They’ve dropped out. So have Bill Richardson and Fred Thompson. Ditto Dennis Kucinich. At best, you’ll be counted as a protest vote.

The world’s tanking stock markets, the flop-sweat in home sales, the deepening, darkening sub-prime chaos and the candidates’ dueling recovery proposals — forget about it. You voted already.

A lot of people have said they stopped and rethought their choices after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a nasty go-round before the South Carolina primary, and after Bill Clinton’s title as “the first black president,” bestowed on him by writer Toni Morrison, was taken away from him — by Toni Morrison.

Did all that change your choice? Too bad, too late.

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Another Great Editorial on Vote-By Mail

Why is it that most the op-ed pieces of substance are opposed to Vote-By Mail? Maybe it is because Vote-By Mail is a very bad idea…

Eight million Californians are expected to vote in Tuesday’s election, the largest turnout for a presidential primary in the state’s history. But even if that total is accurate, it would be grossly incorrect to claim that 8 million voters actually went to the polls. Half mailed in their ballots, some nearly a month ago. And that’s the problem.

How many Republicans voted by mail for Rudy Giuliani? How many Democrats wasted their votes on John Edwards? Those ballots for the now-noncandidates could have determined the outcome of this election. But Edwards and Giuliani supporters can’t recast their votes.

This is only the most glaring example of the fallacy of early voting. The whole system stinks.[Read the whole editorial]
http://tracypress.com/content/view/13396/2244/