Election officials here in Washington are dealing with a little bit of consternation this week, as they are busy certifying lasts weeks election results, which have led to 3 dead people being elected to several offices in the state.
Well, I guess in the short term, dead people being elected is less upsetting than dead people doing the voting. I mean...at some point you need to print the ballots, and it's always possible that someone will pass away between when the ballots are printed and mailed out(now, I have no idea if this happened in this case...these folks could have died 6 months ago)...but something like this is always a possibility as we head to more and more areas doing strictly mail-in ballots.
I'm not even that worked up over the fact that each 'write in' vote is not individually tracked. They are counted...they just aren't tracked to an individual name unless the total number of write-in's ends up having the majority, at which point they are recounted to see if an individual write-in candidate won the election.
The part that frustrates me(and I've seen it on my ballots here), is people running unopposed...for ANYTHING. Even in a case like the one shown in the story, for something like 'Water District Commissioner'.
I wonder if you can go down to the local County Election Office two days before the candidate registration period ends and find out the total number of candidates for different offices, so you can at least try to ensure two names end up on the ballot for each position.
Not that I know if I would want to be a Water Commissioner.
No comments:
Post a Comment