It’s funny to hear the conservatives in Washington cluck about campaign improprieties in California – they blame mail-in ballots. I think that’s ignorant on their part. There’s a lot more wrong with California elections that has nothing to do with how the ballots are delivered.
It starts with voter registration. Our registration process here allows not only non-citizens to vote, but allows people to register without a real address. As one legislator pointed out on the morning news, California does not require any proof of citizenship, only a statement from the registrant that they are a legal citizen.
California also allows a person who claims to have no fixed address to register just about anywhere in the jurisdiction in which they want to vote – a street corner, a shelter, city hall. They can have their voting materials mailed to a PO Box. Without very strict oversight, these policies allow non-citizens to vote at addresses all over the state. That is fraud.
I’m sorry Pollyanna, but some people are bad and they lie. And people can also be stupid and not good at their jobs. It’s just too easy for the overseers to be crooked or incompetent, it’s a system that is set up for election fraud.
The conservatives at the federal legislature think mail-in ballots are ripe for fraud. They are accusing liberal California election officials using mail-in ballots as an excuse to hold up the count while they manufacture more ballots in their favor. Is that my fault? I mailed my ballot in and received a receipt via email on May 16. But the election office was not allowed to count it until election day.
I like mail in ballots and I think it would be easy to make sure they don’t hold up the election process. It is a fact that we have a lot of ballots here in California, it takes a long time to count millions of ballots. So we need a law that says the ballot has to be received, not just postmarked, on election day. And county clerks always complain about staff shortages. Maybe the feds could help us out with teams of official, impartial, trained ballot handlers.
The registration process should be the same whether or not a voter requests a mail-in ballot – you should have to present identification with your picture and street address when you register and sign your form with the same signature that’s on your ID. This could be done at the post office, the DMV, and other state and federal offices that serve the public. But it should be done in person, and it should be good as long as you have that valid ID. But then my mail-in ballot should be good with my signature as long as my ID is valid.
I don’t need the results overnight, I want them to be accurate. I think we need more federal oversight to achieve that.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
My wife and I were just talking the other day about those great 4th of July celebrations that they used to have at the one mile. The Sheriff’s Department Search and Rescue had a trailer that used to make pancakes and sausage, The local politicos gave patriotic speeches without being overly derogatory to the folks they didn’t agree with, There were games and entertainment for the kids, Including a pie eating contest that my son happened to win when he was about eight years old.
I reminisce about this because it truly was clean wholesome entertainment. And it seemed to build the community spirit and bring people together. To my way of thinking just about everything about an an event like this is the right thing to do.
That’s probably why they don’t do it anymore.
Hi BC, thanks for coming by.
Here’s a post you’ll enjoy – from 2016
I don’t know why the pictures have gotten screwy but you can still see that people were lined up all the way over to Woodland at that picnic. They just kept coming, I was shocked. I think that was the last year that event happened – CARD had dropped it, and Randall Stone’s running club had picked it up. I think they did a great job, but when I saw Stone there, he admitted it was a heck of a lot of work and would take a really dedicated volunteer group.
You’re right, we used to have a community here. If you read various social science writers, you hear about how our transient society has killed community. Read Future Shock.
I’ve been trying to work on a post about the sewer rate discussion. It’s a similar situation – the public employees don’t give a shit if they raise rates beyond what people can afford, they can just move along to another town when Chico is up to it’s armpits in shit. They just want to fund their lifestyles. Hope you’ll chime in.