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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Frank Cerabino on Voting by Mail


I am an advocate of reading a local paper.  Sure, the New York Times and the Washington Post are fine “national” newspapers, but you are missing a bet by not subscribing to a local paper wherever you live.  Today’s column by Frank Cerabino in the Palm Beach Post is one good reason why you should read a local paper.

Why I Voted by Mail this week for the First Time

Frank Cerabino (Palm Beach Post -12/29/20)

Voting by mail makes sense in this time of pandemic and in-person voter suppression efforts

For the first time in my life I voted by mail this week.
I didn’t want to do it. I’m one of those conscientious voters who likes to cast a ballot in person. And it’s not only for the satisfaction of seeing my card being fed into a tabulator.
I like the camaraderie of the voting line, even when I get the sense that the person I’m talking to is just going to cancel out my vote.
I don’t mind the wait. There’s something wholesome, patriotic and civilized about showing up to vote and being friendly to other people there.
I also like early voting, a chance to vote in person during the two-week period before Election Day. I have found it reassuring to know that if something happened on that day -- a flat tire, a work conflict, a family emergency -- I wouldn’t miss my chance to have casted a ballot in that election.
But I never once had been tempted to vote by mail. And when asked about it, I’d remind people that voting by mail was the easiest way to have your vote not count.
Statistically, people who mail in votes have a higher rate of their votes being disallowed. In the March presidential primary, more than 18,000 mail-in votes in Florida (about 1.3 percent of the total) were not counted because they either arrived late or had a missing or mismatched signature.
In the 2018 midterms, thousands of mail-in ballots were sent to Florida voters after the required deadline of six days before the election. The blown deadline meant that many completed ballots weren’t returned in time for them to count.
So, if you told me six months ago I’d be voting by mail this election cycle, I would have been shocked.
But two things changed my mind: The unknown effect that the continuing COVID-19 virus will have on the upcoming elections, and the brazen voter suppression strategies deployed by Republicans in recent elections, as they face the real possibility of losing Florida in November.
We got an inkling of COVID-19′s effect in a relatively smaller election in March, (with just a 27 percent turnout) while the virus’ effect was just starting to be realized.
Poll workers, who tend to be retirees, were suddenly faced with spending a long day in the proximity of a parade of strangers who could pass along a deadly virus to them.
About 800 of these poll workers didn’t show up to work on that Election Day, causing many of the county’s 454 polling places to be short-handed and not be opened the whole day.
Here’s an email I got from a local poll worker before that election:
“Frank, I value your opinion, so here goes. I have been a poll worker in West Palm Beach for five years. I am 78 years old in good health except for a cardiac incident twenty years ago.
“My wife does not want me to work on Tuesday. I am inclined to work at the polls as an inspector. What would you do?”
I told him I would listen to his wife when it came to the virus.
“The upside of you going is far less than the potential downside,” I wrote. “Plus, you’ve got to live with your wife -- and if you give it to her, you’ll never hear the end of it.”
We don’t know how prevalent the virus will be on November 3rd, but chances are that it will still be a pressing health issue.
And the effect that it will have on the ability of local elections officials to keep the polling places fully staffed and open is anybody’s guess. Plus, the line’s not going to be much fun if everybody is masked up, standing far apart and trying not to emit water vapor on each other.
My other rationale for voting by mail has to do with the indisputable fact that Florida is both a key state for Republicans to win, and one in which they trail Democrats in registered voters by about 250,000 people.
How do they overcome that?
Seven years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court turned its back on enforcing the Voting Rights Act, Republican legislators in Southern states went to work making it harder for some voters to cast a ballot on Election Day.
By closing more than 1,200 polling places in strategic locations, they created the now-common spectacle of seeing long lines of urban voters waiting for hours on Election Day trying to cast a ballot.
At the same time, President Donald Trump has been recklessly undermining mail-in voting and using it to already question the election results in November.
“Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED election in our nation’s history -- unless this stupidity is ended,” Trump tweeted last month.
But Trump’s a mail-in voter himself and Republicans plan to win the mail-in vote in Florida, as they have every year recently.
In the most recent statewide general election two years ago, Florida Republicans had a cushion of 54,208 more mail-in votes than Democrats -- which was more than the margin of victory in the governor’s race.
And in Trump’s own election in 2016, Republicans in Florida had a 58,244-vote advantage in mail-in votes, which was more than half the statewide margin in Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
So, while Trump is calling mail-in voting a scam, the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a mailer this summer to its voters urging them to vote by mail in the upcoming election.
“President Trump and Florida conservatives are counting on you!” the mailer says. “Request your absentee ballot today.”
Between the virus and the voter suppression strategy, I’ve come to the conclusion that voting in person in November makes less sense than voting by mail.
So, I updated my signature, requested and received a ballot, and this week mailed in a completed ballot for the August 18th primary. I consider it a dry run for November.
How did I feel mailing the ballot? Not as good as showing up in person. But satisfied in a different, unfamiliar way -- one, I hope, that is only temporary.
Extraordinary times require flexibility.



Convinced?  If you live in Palm Beach County, and not already signed up to vote by mail, and want to join Frank in doing so, CLICK HERE or just visit


If you live elsewhere, do a google search for your State and the words “vote by mail."

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