I don’t think I have missed voting in any election ever since I was first old enough to vote. Voting is a privilege, and one that we need to exercise. Even if we dislike some or all of the candidates, it is still worth exercising our right to vote as our first line of defense in protecting this and all of our civil rights.

If you live long enough and keep your eyes open, though, you start to notice changes and trends. In this vein, it is interesting to see how the process of voting has evolved over the past several years. We first registered to vote in California when we moved here in 1980. Way back then, voter registration involved proving your identity and placing a verification signature on file. At election time, when we went down the street to our local voting place (usually the neighborhood school), we signed in to allow poll workers to check our signature and verify our ballot. 

Years passed and we noticed that the poll workers no longer asked us to sign in. We inquired how they knew whether someone else voted in our place, and were told not to worry about it. My wife tried to show her identification, and the poll worker berated her, told her to “keep her identity to herself” (their words, not mine), and told her again to move along and not worry about it. I asked how I would know if someone had voted in my name, and received my own “don’t be ridiculous” lecture.

More years passed and we were traveling a lot, so we applied for permanent absentee ballot status. No worries; the county was perfectly happy to mail ballots to us. We filled them out at our convenience and either returned them by mail or, if it was election day, dropped them off at the local polling place. It all worked well, and the county assured us that signatures on the ballot envelopes were enough to verify that it was really us who had voted. 

So far, so good. And then the Covid lockdowns came, and the county started mailing ballots to everyone. And we started hearing stories about people receiving multiple ballots, misplaced or misdirected boxes of ballots, and how attempts to rein in the wholesale distribution of ballots meant the risk of someone being disenfranchised. What about an illegal ballot canceling my vote; wouldn’t that be a form of disenfranchisement? Our elected officials told us, again, not to worry about it. Very comforting. Not.

This brings us up to California’s primary election earlier this year, when we noticed more changes in the voting process. First, we discovered that there are no longer any local polling places like the neighborhood school. In past years the ballot mailings would list our nearest local polling place. No more; there was no such information provided on the envelope that brought us our ballot. We were told to either return our marked ballot by mail or turn it in at a ballot drop box. No problem, except that either we had to already know the drop box location or we had to go on line to find it. We knew where the nearest drop box was, two or three miles away, but what about the people who didn’t know and did not have the wherewithal to find the location with an online search?

Next, the information told us that the county had set up “central” voting places (tents?) in several tens of locations all over the county, but did not say where they were. Again, you had to go online to search for the nearest location and then find a way to get the ballot there. Of course, you could simply mail your ballot in its postage-paid envelope. Given that the county is still, in July, sending me emails saying they just updated the election results, I guess there is still plenty of time to deal with stray ballots. Interesting changes, but no worries, or so they assure us.

Last but not least, the materials that came with our ballots announced that the county would send mobile voting centers (ballots in a van, anyone?) to select locations to help select citizens with their voting. They would bring ballots, help people fill them out, and then take them back to be counted. How convenient! If, of course, you are among the “select” few given this support. So why bring ballots when ballots were already mailed out to anyone eligible to vote? Who were the select citizens, how many ballots were voted this way, and how do we know if some neighborhoods were favored over others? I have no idea, and certainly saw no mobile voting centers in our area. It must not be a concern, though, or we would have heard something about it in the news media (sarcasm alert). 

So our elections have certainly evolved, and much more so over the past few years. No worries; our government is on top of it. Or maybe behind it. Or both. Must be nice for them to choose their voters.