Monday, October 11, 2004

Absentee Voting

I (finally) received my absentee ballot today from New Mexico, and hang it all if I'm not completely confused. First, they sent me the ballot by e-mail, which I wasn't expecting at all; and second, the people who wrote the instructions for the ballot apparently weren't expecting it, either, because they make a number of references to "Official Inner Envelopes" and "Official Outer Envelopes" that rather obviously couldn't arrive by e-mail. If all they had to do was send the ballot by e-mail, why didn't I get it earlier? And how do I send this ballot in without the official envelopes? If I send it in regular envelopes, will it be counted? (Apparently not, since the official envelopes apparently have a number of things on the back, unspecified, that need to be filled out, and have the absentee voter registration number, which presumably they need.) Are the official envelopes coming by mail? And it all has to reach the proper authorities by the closing of the polls election day, which is going to be tight, so I can't wait too long for them to arrive - if they arrive at all.

Today's Canadian Thanksgiving, so there's no mail service today; hopefully if anything arrives it will do so tomorrow. I'm sure there's some obvious point that makes everything make sense that I'm just not getting. It would have been nice to have at least some sort of form-letter-type note with the ballot, but there was nothing at all, just the PDF attachment.