Election in two days – I’ve heard people are holding on to their ballots, with less than 20% already returned in Butte County. I’ve seen some chatter on social media, people who are distrustful of the post office, planning to turn them in by hand. I think, at this point, if you haven’t mailed your ballot, you might want to go to a drop-off location. I mailed mine just a couple of days after I received it. A few weeks later, I checked the secretary of state’s website and saw it had been received and accepted.
Here’s that link – thanks Dave –
https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/
I’m glad I voted early, but if you didn’t, you should probably head for one of these convenient drop-off locations in Chico. These secure drop-off boxes are available 24 hours a day as of October 10, until election day. I had previously posted that “polls” close at 5pm – I think that means the county clerk’s office is closed, but the boxes should be available until 8pm.
Butte County Library – Chico, 1108 Sherman Avenue
Chapman Elementary School, 1071 16th Street
Chico City Hall, 411 Main Street
Chico State BMU, W. 2nd & Chestnut Street
Department of Employment & Social Services (DESS), 765 East Avenue
Please vote. I care what you think, and Democracy is depending on you.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Why are polls closed in Butte County at 5pm on election day? This is a 1st?
RDW
sorry, I misunderstood the information – the secure boxes will be out until 8pm, the county clerk’s office closes at 5pm (so that, I assume, they can start collecting the boxes). Sorry if I threw you off, I made note of that gaff in my post.
I will have to ask though, why do people wait until the last minute? I think the new system is a lot more conducive to voting than herding everybody to precincts within a 12 hour period.
Juanita – I wanted to know for myself whether allegations surrounding voter irregularities from the 2020 election had any merit. Unfortunately, there’s such a gross amount of inaccurate information out there, I jumped in to find out for myself. I gathered a team of citizens (both liberal and conservative, though mostly conservative) and we became the Butte County “Voter Integrity Project”. Our team worked alongside New California State (NCS) volunteers to examine voter rolls in our county AND as well as the results of Dr. Douglas Frank, whom examined each California county (and many other states across the nation). The results thus far are chilling…yes, dead people voted in the 2020 election, yes – the voter rolls are sloppily maintained (though they are supposed to be kept accurate by crosschecking with DMV, SSA, US Postal Service, etc.). Ballots are mailed out to far too many people, when addresses are not kept current, ballots go to two or three locations. All these extra ballots can be manipulated. Ballot boxes are prone to stuffing, bad actors have photocopied ballots and over-voted. Biden says California is “a model of voting for the nation” God help us because after looking at our little county, our election process is alarming! The only thing to restore election confidence in this state is IN PERSON voting AND showing an identification card. Should not be too difficult considering the CA DMV issues an identification card to anyone, even those in the country illegally. I have encouraged everyone I know to NOT vote by mail but rather to take their mail in ballot with them on Election Day (Tuesday, November 8, 2022) to the Elections Office and turn in their mail in ballot to vote in person. Every person of legal age to vote, should do so, this is the most basic right AND responsibility of being a citizen.
Thank you for doing that Steve. The rolls used to be posted – every voter in your precinct, along with their address – at every precinct station. That is public information – who is voting in your neighborhood, and do they have a legitimate address? Those rolls disappeared as our polling stations were systematically closed. When I asked Candace Grubbs if I could review the rolls – after our current city manager Mark Sorensen told me he had done so and found discrepancies – Grubbs told me I had to be a “bona fide” organization, aka “pac”, and that I would be asked to pay per page. And Grubbs has been pissed off at me ever since, she felt I was insinuating incompetence.
So, thank you for doing a real audit, and I hope you’ll write what you’ve found in a letter to the newspaper. And send it here, I’ll post it.
And YES, now is the time to exercise your legal and legitimate right to vote. And pay attention, the legislature is constantly passing laws that water down our values and our quality of life.
And I’ll add, I’m really proud to say that my adult son just voted in his first election.
Steve, I need to ask you an important question – who would you get to “man” the polling places, because we’ve all had bad experiences at the precinct. Twice my husband was told he couldn’t vote – one precinct worker tried to tell us the poll was closed at 7:30, and another worker said she couldn’t find him on the rolls – he reached out with his finger and said, “there I am…” In person voting is only as good as the people who are running the precincts, and they’re not always a bunch of feel-good volunteers, some of them are political operatives. How do we avoid that?
Juanita,
While Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom would have us roll out California’s election process “as the standard for the nation”, I would roll up California’s elections process and throw it in the trash and start over. We’ve stretched our voting process out to almost a month and despite all the technology at our fingertips, we cannot seem to maintain an accurate or up to date voter roll…perhaps because the powers that be do NOT want an accurate voter roll? Not to mention how easy it is to stuff extra ballots into an unmanned ballot drop box!
Your question is spot on, how do we keep political operatives OR just plain bad customer service, out of our elections process? The answer is “we the people”. It’s got to resonate with your readers AND America’s voters, they have to want something better than what we have.
Our county currently hires pollsters from a temporary employment agency (as outlined in Butte County’s Voter’s Choice Act, Election Administration Plan). How about that…our most important act of democracy is left to a “temp agency”. Similar to our county’s contract when we purchased Dominion voting machines, we hired their staff to help county staff operate them (during one of the most contested elections in history).
Consider that one of several U.S. government cyber-security professionals critical of the use of electronic voting machines, had this to say…”the (voting machines) are not a house with an open door…rather, they are a house with no doors or windows whatsoever”.
There is no easy answer but there IS a straightforward answer. If we are to have elections that people can trust, they must be kept simple and transparent. Holding elections on a single day (a voter holiday) is how it’s done in Europe, show up, show your identification, and cast your ballot – you will have results that same day…results you can trust.
Wow Steve, you have opened one hell of a can of worms. I hope you will keep working on this. See BC’s response also posted. When the dirt settles from this election I think I’ll post all these comments as a blog and we can keep this conversation going.
I’ll say, I don’t think in-person voting, all in one day, is practical. I can’t get into it now, but here’s an example – my husband is a contractor, so are all our friends – they don’t get paid for “holidays”. They also travel – here’s an average week in my husband’s routine – Portola, Williams, Chester, Willows, and a weekend in lovely downtown East Quincy, folllowed up with a Monday morning job in Yoooooba City! So we have to come up with something else, and I think we can. I hope to talk to you again soon.
I applaud Steve Jackson for his involvement in reviewing the election process. I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions, but that does not in any way diminish the hard work that he did in reviewing elections. We need more involved citizens.
Elections are managed by the same poorly run municipal government that cant balance a budget, fix our streets, or clean our parks. I would expect them to be inaccurate to some degree. Of course there will always be errors. It is the magnitude of the error, and if it is significant enough to change election results.
There are a lot of accusations made. They are probably valid. But what is the number? How many votes? Would the outcome be any different if there was 100% accuracy? Many folks rant that the election was stolen-but without numbers. What is the error?
In person voting is not the answer. It can’t be. We don’t live in that world any more. Mail in is a joke as well. There are plenty of on-line technologies, with secondary verifications to certify each the voter. Just like buying an airplane ticket, logging into your bank, or applying for Medicare. Then follow up with rigorous testing of the data. If its on-line, you can query and test it. And each voter can log in to see if their vote was counted.
Allow in person voting for those folks who cant or wont figure out how to use a computer.
Thanks BC, like I was telling Steve, I think this conversation deserves it’s own post, and I’ll work on that this weekend, please stay tuned.