As you know by these three posts from 2016, 2020, and this year, I pretty much jumped on the vote-by-mail bandwagon as soon as it became available to all citizens, regardless of reason, at least in Florida. I posted about my experiences of voting in person in past elections and I would hate to lose the privilege of voting by mail for the simple fact that going to a polling place has to be one of the worst experiences ever.
Frankly though, I'm still absolutely perplexed as to why we haven't figured out a secure, safe, and reliable way for people to vote from the convenience of their home computer. Yes I'm sure the newer generations would love to do it on their phones, but even I see that would be absolutely ridiculous. Or would it? I'm sure somewhere in the future, they'll find a way.
This post is to bring attention to the process after one mails out their ballot, how can you verify that "they" actually got it. And who are "they?" So in my neck of the woods, "they" are Highlands County Division of Elections:
Above is a live (at the time of this post) snapshot of their website. Notice the live tracker tallying the number of ballots received in real time. Cool!
To get my individual result, I clicked on the vote by mail link, then VBM Ballot Tracking, entered my name and date of birth on the simple form, checked the box that "I agree" to a little statement declaring that I am the voter in question looking up my own information and not being a nosy busybody or somebody trying to commit fraud or something, clicked a Captcha declaring I'm not a robot since we know them robots are evil and aside from wanting to kill us seniors, they want to meddle in our elections as well, clicked submit, and voila:
So woohoo, my vote's been counted. I can rest easy now.
Unfortunately as I glance back at that live tracker showing the current count of mailed in ballots as 2,789, I also know what county I live in. And darn tootin' I got a sickly feelin' that 2,788 of those are for "the other guy."