San Diego out of absentee ballots; Diebold says, "Don't worry"

Got your tin foil hat on?

San Diego runs short of absentee ballots

Unusually high demand and a printing order that wasn't filled fast enough caused the San Diego County Registrar of Voters to run short of absentee ballots this week. About 5,000 photocopies were mailed out instead, said Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas.

Trust us, they say, we will copy your vote onto a real ballot and count it later!

When those ballots are returned, registrar's employees will copy voters' choices by hand onto regular card stock ballots that can be run through the optical scanners that count the votes.

And who is responsible for this snafu, you ask?

Our "friends" at Diebold, the same wonderful people behind the questionable electronic-voting machines that Election Day voters will use in San Diego County.

Haas said the ballots were to be printed by Diebold, the same company that makes the electronic touchscreen machines that will be used Tuesday. Diebold officials told him there had been problems with the printing press operation, Haas said.

More in extended...

The San Diego County Democratic Party chair has a good grasp of the obvious, along with an interesting use of the word "mistakes":

"I just think it's bizarre that they literally transfer people's votes from one piece of paper to another," said San Diego County Democratic Party Chairman Jess Durfee. "Any time you do that, there have got to be mistakes."

Voters who have received photocopied ballots agree that this smells fishy.

Alma Thigpen of Poway was among them. "When I opened it, the first thing I noticed was that it was a Xeroxed copy," she said. "I just didn't think (it) was kosher."

Registrar's employees explained the ballot remaking process, but Thigpen wasn't satisfied. "There just seem to be so many ways errors could be made," she said.

Things like this are going to keep happening, in every election, until we demand election accountability, paper ballots, and an end to incompetence, or shenanigans, or whatever this is. It really bothers me that election integrity is so far down on our list of political priorities. This needs to be closer to the top of the to-do list.