Vote by mail: a cautionary tale

Last Friday, right before heading out of town, the Mrs. and I left out for the mailman our completed ballots for Tuesday's primary election. The mailman dutifully picked them both up on Friday.

Hers went through the mail as you might expect, and she got her text on Monday from Multnomah County Elections, telling her that her ballot had been received and was in order. But it didn't work out that way with mine.

Now, I'm signed up with the Postal Service for a daily morning email telling me what snail mail they've got coming to me. And on Monday, lo and behold, it showed that my ballot was coming back to me!

This was disconcerting, because if it did return to the house, there was no one in town who could get it back into the system for me by Tuesday. I hoped that the mailman would see that this was supposed to go out, not come back, and that he'd do the sensible thing, route it to the Elections folks.

And I guess that's what he did, because on Wednesday afternoon, the day after the election, I got the confirmatory email from the vote comters that my ballot did indeed arrive, postmarked early enough that it counted. But I'll bet it didn't get there until Wednesday.

If the Trump crew got its way (I'm lookin' at you, Christine) and future ballots had to be received by the county by Election Day, my vote would not, in fact, have counted, due to malfeasance on the post office's part. You just can't trust that outfit to get it right. Fellow Oregonians, let this episode be a lesson. Find and use one of the offiicial drop boxes.