any other problems with absentee ballots - our is growing stranger

The city clerk sent out the absentee ballots without the address on the return envelope. We spent a lot of energy telling people to carefully follow the printed rules that come with the ballot - there is nothing in the rules about addressing the envelope you return your ballot in.

Two stories have come from our city clerk, Kelly S., she told me this morning that they had mailed out over 2000 ballots and that she knew nothing about the problem until three people called her at home over the weekend. When I asked her how she missed the fact that she didn't affix the label where the envelope indicated she should she told me that she had paid extra to have the address printed on the envelopes and she and her staff just assumed that the address was there.

Later she told the reporter from the Daily Herald that she did notice that one box came from the printers without the address's but she was going to use them for something else. (They are marked on both sides for use with absentee voting so what other use she had in mind I can't imagine.) Someone on her staff mistakenly grabbed that box and no one noticed the missing address as they were stuffing envelopes. She also told the reporter that 1200 ballots went out and only 250-500 would not have the needed address on them.

The only item that stayed unchanged was that the envelopes were put together assembly fashion and no one noticed the missing address.

During our phone conversation I mentioned to Kelly that I thought she should call the Postmaster and see what he could do about it. The reporters said she had and that the ballots with or without the address will be routed to the correct place.

Did I mention that she is a Republican? It will be interesting how this works out.