Being a purportedly socially conscientious sort, I vote. I even decided to vote in the primary this year, given the extent to which past elections have been decided by who won the primary. (And frankly, yes, I believe that it's optimal to have more than one candidate for any position in the primaries. Uncontested elections are nobody's friend.) To wit, I checked out the candidates, filled out my absentee ballot early, and mailed it in the day before Election Day. I thought that my civic duty was done with.
This, as it turns out, was not entirely true. At 3:30 on Thursday the 28th, I noticed that there was a message on my cell phone. I'd checked the phone several times and had not seen said message until then. The message, from the King County Records, Elections and Licensing Services Division, told me that as my signature on the back of the ballot envelope had not matched the signature on file, my ballot would not be counted. The sole method by which to correct this would be to sign and mail or present an affidavit from RELS no later than 4:30 PM on Thursday the 28th.
At 3:30 on Thursday the 28th, I was on my way to the airport. I had not received the affidavit from RELS in the mail; I had received no other notice that my ballot was not valid. The message was dated 7:35 PM on Wednesday the 27th. I called the number given for phone inquiries immediately and was told that yes, the deadline was the 28th, yes, they knew that they had not notified me in a timely fashion and no, there was nothing I could do about it. I asked for a supervisor. I asked for follow-up. The supervisor told me that they would follow up. And that was all. I steamed through my plane flight. I cursed in the presence of random air travelers. When I got home this afternoon, what should I find in the mail but the promised affidavit, postmarked September 27th. It would have arrived the next day, probably in the late afternoon, at which time it would have been too late for me to respond.
I want to take tangible action on this. I hope that the number of people in circumstances similar to mine is small, but there's no way to know until King County starts posting numbers on how many of their absentee ballots are rejected, which they apparently don't do at present time. So I'm asking that people link to this entry, ask around, as I'll be doing, and share this story if they can, to see if anyone else has had the same experience. I won't argue for the importance of my individual vote; my district seems to be politically pretty homogeneous, and one vote more or less might not make a difference. There are districts that aren't, and where one or ten or a hundred ballots rejected for reasons like these can make all the difference. Anyone in King County, Washington who's had this happen to them, please, e-mail me at ursula.owen @gmail.com. In the meantime, I'll be voting in person, thank you very much.