BOB PRATTE
Cynthia Kinney, the esteemed dance instructor at Hemet High, had a worrisome week after a Riverside County elections department Web site did not indicate her mail-in ballot was received.
"My husband and I have voted in every election since the 1970s," she wrote in an e-mail dispatch Tuesday, a week after the election. "In the last few elections we have had to vote by mail because there isn't a voting location in our area. I have always had the utmost confidence in our election system, until this election."
Kinney monitored a Riverside County Web site that tells mail-in voters whether their ballots were received and counted. She was dismayed when she repeatedly read the message: "Could not find your record. Please call the election office to inquire about your ballot status."
Her husband, Hemet High Assistant Principal Larry Kinney, saw that his ballot had been received but hadn't been counted. To find out the information, they visited www.election.co.riverside.ca.us and clicked on "The Status of My Vote-By-Mail Ballot."
This fall, I was stuck into a mail-in precinct too, probably because my neighborhood had a slightly different ballot than streets a few blocks away.
I tried the Web site Wednesday and learned my ballot had arrived but had not been counted. I felt the dance teacher's pain.
I like to vote on Election Day. Mail-in ballots can be dropped off at any polling place. Rather than using the mail, I stopped by the polling place where I usually vote.
During the 1980s, I lived in isolated Snow Creek Village on the desert side of the San Gorgonio Pass, between Cabazon and Palm Springs.
I enjoyed taking my ballot to the most unusually located precincts I could find. I dropped off my ballot in Rancho Carrillo, which is reached by a private road that leaves Highway 74 near San Juan Capistrano in Orange County and winds six miles up into Riverside County to reach the remote enclave inside the Cleveland National Forest.
I voted in a mobile home community on a bank of the Colorado River, north of Blythe.
With precincts shifting to mail-in status, my future voting safaris may be limited.
Riverside County voting officials promoted the use of mail-in ballots to speed up the vote-counting and shorten lines, especially during a presidential election with a giant turnout. Counting can begin seven business days before an election. If mail-in ballots are submitted early, they can speed up a count, but not when people like me drop them off at a polling place.
On Thursday, Kinney and I felt better. A helpful election department worker checked and found Kinney's ballot had been received and would be counted. Her faith in the elections department was restored. The Web site said I had dropped off a good ballot.
Rebecca Martine, chief deputy registrar with the county elections department, said Friday that our ballots likely will be counted in the final 58,000 mail-in submissions. Still to count were 47,000 provisional ballots, meaning they were cast with possible problems.
She said that while I was contributing to slowing down the vote count by dropping off my ballot on Election Day, I still was helpful. "You cut down on the lines," she said. "It does take longer to get your result."
Published: Monday, November 17, 2008