Good morning gentle readers,
It has been A Week, hasn’t it? The heat is absolutely ON here in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. My walks have been short this week… and even despite being short the sweat factor was off the charts… as were the mosquitoes! And there was no walk last night as some insane storms barreled through bringing wild storms with winds and rain.
However, I wanted to share some information I gathered when I called the County Elections Office yesterday.
Here in Pennsylvania we have the option of signing up for a Vote By Mail ballot, which I have done since our state voted this in. (Really, I believe every citizen should get a mail in ballot for every election. Period.) However, the news has had rumblings of mail in ballot issues for months now, but this week they seemed to reach the “Danger, Will Robinson!!” level of concern. NPR did a good synopsis of what is happening here and again this morning here.
I wanted to encourage you to give your elections office a call to find out if they have any plans (I bet they do!) My office shared that they have plans if things become problematic, but it felt so good to be reassured that my county is being very proactive about this and, in fact, they are meeting today for more discussions.
(Allegheny County Residents can sign up to get the minutes from that board meeting in an emailed newsletter here.)
The Elections Office worker let me know that I was not the first person to call with election concerns, which made me happy! This year it might be a good idea to figure out your “Plan B” voting plan! And when you call your County Elections Office, make sure you thank them for all they do!
Have a good weekend and remember, it is never too early to make your plan to vote!
I’ve been voting in person again since the 2020 presidential election, when my mail-in ballot was never received. But I still strongly support having the option of voting by mail! I’m glad to hear they’re getting calls and making contingency plans!
(Hope you didn’t have any damage last night — those storms were crazy! I’m glad we were able to stay inside and didn’t have to be anywhere because it sounds like there were lots of problems on the roads.)
Yikes! This is so concerning. We’ve voted by mail since the Pandemic and so far have had no problems. We’ve also never mailed in our completed ballots – we always drop them in person at a local drop box.
Thanks for this reminder. In Washington, we all vote by mail. But if your ballot doesn’t arrive for some reason, you can print your own provisional ballot from the website (or have another sent by mail). We (personally) return our ballots via local drop boxes rather than the mail. It’s been a while since mail has been processed locally, so things sometimes don’t get postmarked for days. (And all our mail, even if we are sending it next door, goes to Spokane [2.25 hours away] for processing and comes back in 3 days or so. Which I hate.)
Folks can also still go to a county voting site to return their ballot (and vote, I guess).
I’m especially concerned about Texas purging their voting rolls.
Thanks Kat for sharing this information. I should call and ask. Since the pandemic we have voted by mail and dropped our ballots off at the office of the election commissioner. Due to all the possible political shenanigans, we didn’t return our request for mail-in ballots for the midterms but plan to vote in person. In this deep red state, our governor supports whatever the president proposes. He would also like to eliminate the blue dots in the metro area (well – metro for Ne. that is Lincoln and Omaha). So who knows what will happen next. We decided to err on the side of caution and vote in person.
I’d be all in with voting by mail but Dale loves to vote in person. And, as an elected official in my town, it is good to be seen voting, too. We always see so many people we know and the social aspect of it is fun. I have a ton of faith in our town clerk and her staff to carry out a fair election, it’s so upsetting to know that it’s at risk in other places.
The weather sure has been crazy! The storm that blew through had me scrambling for flash lights and filling up my water bottle just in case. Because I was prepared, nothing happened.