Here’s the proof – I printed the page off the county clerk’s website, showing that my ballot was in the clerk’s office within 24 hours of mailing.
I think mail in ballots are the best way to go. I put my ballot in the mail on the 25th, after noon, and it was at the clerk’s office by the end of the next day.
How do I know? I checked here:
http://clerk-recorder.buttecounty.net/BallotStatusLookup/Default.aspx
First I used the last four digits of my SSN, but it registered negative. So, I tried again with the last four digits of my driver’s license number, and there it was. It told me not only that my ballot had been received but that it’s condition was “good”. In other words, my votes will be counted, at least as surely as any that are turned in from the precincts on Election Night.
In fact, it was the problems we were having at the polling station that finally drove my husband and I to register for mail in ballots. My husband was a contractor, he’d leave town as early as 5 am to get to a job in Chester or Quincy. Sometimes those were overnight jobs, sometimes he’d come back after 6pm. There were many Election Days where we’d be dragging in with our kids after 7:30 pm. The polls, after all, are supposed to be OPEN until 8PM. They’re not allowed to lock the door and start closing up shop at 7:30, or 7:45, or 7:55. It’s 8:00 straight up. But twice they tried to tell my husband he was too late. Another time they tried to tell him his name was not on the list – he had to lean over the old crone and put his stubby glue-covered finger right on his name, our address being right directly across the street. “oh, well,” she says, and hands him a ballot without one word of apology.
We also found that our polling place was changed so frequently, we never knew where to go until the last minute. In the June 2011, the elections office closed a bunch of polling stations, saying it was because the students had left town and those stations were not adequately used. This was not true – at least a half dozen of my friends living on the south side of town showed up at empty polling stations – old fuckers who’d been voting in the same spot for years without interruption.
People are rightfully paranoid about their ballot being counted. If you wait til Election Day, you have no way of knowing, ever, that your ballot was turned in or counted. But, according to the county clerk, mine has been received and will be counted, thankyouverymuch!
Chico Taxpayers Association 
“The returned ballot is good.”
Well, that’s nice but how do you know they counted your votes for the people you voted for and the propositions/measures you voted for or against?
Remember what Ann Schwab…er…I mean Uncle Joe Biden…er…sorry…I’ll get this right…it was what Uncle Joe Stalin said:
You know, comrades, that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
When I turn in my ballot, I have to suspend my distrust in other human beings. That’s hard, but oh well – it takes the same kind of suspension of distrust to live among other humans, at all. Not only does my neighbor have a Schwab sign in his yard, one weekend when my husband was out of town, the guy got in fight with his wife and decided to “fix” my cedar fence, screaming at my dogs to shut up while he pounded the screws on my fence with a claw hammer. When I asked him to stop it he screamed at me that I was crazy. But I still live next to this guy, every day. So, I guess I can trust Candace Grubbs – somewhat.
And, I heard good news about Prop 30 – as of the other day, polls showed it was behind, not getting the 51% support it needs to pass. Maybe that’s a good omen for the other tax increase bills.
Well, well, well…you’d think that after the hatchet job Mary Gulag did on Toby Schendelbeck that old Bobby Speer would bury the hatchet…but NOOOOOO!
In this week’s edition of his rag he does a hatchet job on Evans, Schendelbeck, Coolidge and Morgan and he goes after an ad they put in his paper. And as always Speer pimps for more and higher taxes.
Old Bobby Speer really knows how to run a newspaper, doesn’t he?
And as I recall he also said untrue and derogatory things about the blog you had.
Even for free his paper is vastly overpriced.
I have finally quit reading the CN&R. Speer printed my last letter, so, we’re even. I don’t read the ER much anymore either. I have found that there are better things to do and better people to spend my time with. Thanks for coming over Joseph! I’ll try to keep the blog interesting! You are really helpful keeping the conversation going, I sure appreciate your input.
I promise I’ll get a good write up on that meeting I went to yesterday, it was a can of worms.