13,000 absentee ballots delayed [CO: ballots not mailed, officials tipped off by voters' calls]

Denver Post ^ | Oct 20, 2004 | David Olinger

[gridlock]

< 'Rat>

C'mon dudes! I got 500 ballots to fill out between now and next Friday! I can't get them done if I don't get them all on time!

< /'Rat>

[mykroar]

There was other confusion this year as well.

When I got my first election notice, it mentioned that you would have to re-apply for an absentee ballot. I did not do that because I was planning on early voting on-site this year.

When I got there they said I couldn't vote because I was coded as absentee. I have since received my ballot, but CO does appear to be completely screwed up this year.

[Calpernia]

ping

[snooker]

Since a lot of Republicans use absentee ballots, this is clear disenfranchisement. Republican's work so they can't take time off to vote, the election officials know this.

Lawsuit time.

[ProudVet77]

Like to see some of those addresses. Wonder what percentage are military. Wonder about the uptick in absentee ballots.

[Logical me]

What's wrong here is the whole election system is totally screwed up and knowing government it will never get fixed.

[InvisibleChurch]

a quick way to fix this and other voter fraud is for the feds to show some of these libcampaign workers in chains being shuffled off to prison ... i'm thinking though, that if the polls keep going the way they are that fewer people will risk potential legal problems if they see that it won't do any good

[3AngelaD]

Why did they farm this out to California and expect things to work? Is there no company in Denver qualified and equipped to send out these absentee ballots? Something stinky here.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Good job by the loyal government workers! (Mostly union democrats government workers .../sarcasm.)

By the way, NONE of these "corrections" would matter until the democrat liars (er, lawyers) get their hands on the returned repubbie ballots ....

Then, every one of them missing a sleeve or with a bad date would get rejected!

[viaveritasvita]

The stamp machine broke!!????? THE STAMP MACHINE BROKE???!!

That's the lamest thing I've heard in a long time! Have they ever heard of GOING TO THE POST OFFICE AND PURCHASING STAMPS!!???

Sheesh!

Ah well, at least they caught it in time. My feeling is that more conservatives vote via absentee than libs.

<><

[oldironsides]

Pennsylvania is having problems with absentee ballot issues because of the legal fight from Democrats aimed at Ralph Nader

[reformedliberal]

What does working have to do with it?

Polls are open at 7 am and close at 8pm. Everyone gets a lunch hour. There are sick days, family leave days and personal days at many workplaces.

I purposely stopped scheduling vacations that coincided w/elections after 2000.

Responsibility lies with the voter. I see no litigation in this, personally.

I run 2 businesses, one with hourly appointments and one with shipments that are often on deadline. I am over 60. I am a volunteer. I cannot tell you the excuses I hear for not voting ("I thought others would vote the way I would, so I didn't bother") or working ("I am retired and have luncheons and card parties to attend"; "I have to attend the church meatball dinner") I am not making this up and I am talking about county GOP members.

My volunteers are mostly people in their 20s (work and kids)who are turned off by the local Party and former Dems who are terrified of the left from personal experience.

Get up early, vote late, skip lunch,take a personal day, lose a couple of hours income or lose your country. Seems a no-brainer to me.

Why wait this late to check on your ballot? Once every 2 years we get a say in who our officials, our laws and our representatives are. Once every 4 years we get to decide the President and a Senator. Why would we schedule travel for those days? If it is so unavoidable that we know enough in advance to request an absentee ballot, why wait until 10 days out to check? Why hang on the phone for half an hour and why do that more than once? They can get their butts down to the clerk's office and fill out an absentee in person. I have done that 4 times in my life.

[ubu]

"Stamp Machine" is a misnomer. Actually, these machines sort the mail by zip, stamp it (in the sense of an ink imprint, not lick-and-stick), place a bar code on the bottom which is readable by the post office's sorting machines and bundle the results. Therefore, the sender gets a break on the postage, since much of the presorting has been done by the sender. The machine counts how many envelopes were stamped and that is verified by the post office.

The discounts scale with the level of the sorting. A few years ago, if you pre-sorted down to the zip+4 the rate was a mere 17.5 cents. So a failure of the machine meant that even sorting and stamping by hand (or lick-n-stick), the office took a huge financial hit to their mail budget.

The machine where I work sorts/stamps over 400,000 bills per month, and has to be taken down every 2 months for up to 3 days of routine maintenance. This causes a backup of up to 20,000 bills per day. Needless to say, developing a plan to deal with this has become high on managment's "to do" list.

[agrace]

You know, deliberate fraud efforts aside, it never ceases to amaze me that these people (meaning elected officials and govt offices in charge of this all over the US) can't get the ballots printed, handled, sorted and mailed properly and timely.

It's utterly ridiculous that in this day and age, we have so many voters that have to bug people to get a stupid ballot, correctly comprised, that they already asked for in the first place.

[agrace]

Get up early, vote late, skip lunch,take a personal day, lose a couple of hours income or lose your country.

VERY well said. Great tagline material. :)

[didi]

We don't have ours yet. We are a military family. Texas. NOt too worried about Bush there, yet we should be able to vote.

[shield]

I have a relative that is military and is Arizona...he told me he'd never received his. Of course he's a republican.

[JesseJane]

These are the same people who are surprised that Christmas Day is always 12/25. SHTUPID..............