Voting

I got myself to my polling place around 9AM this morning, finding it a bustle of activity, but no real lines.  California is trying to really push voting-by-mail and if your polling place does not have enough in-person voters, it will be shut down and anyone in that precinct will be required to vote-by-mail.  There are many concerns about voting by mail: ease of coercing a vote, stolen ballots, undelivered ballots, ballots returned with insufficient postage after the deadline to vote, etc. There are provisions for people who did not receive their ballot to go & vote by person in their polling place, but then they only get a provisional ballot - one with a complicated procedure for determining whether or not it will be counted.  For those reasons I show up in person, but the thing I found odd is that there are three polling places in the one building where I go to vote. Wouldn't it make more sense to combine these polling places rather than get rid of them all together? Really, it wouldn't effect my voting at all - two of the polling places are in the same room, but I have not heard of any cases of combining polling places.  If my polling place ever goes extinct, I guess I'll have to go line up at the registrars office.

All the same, I believe this is a very important election for our country and for the state of California, where we seem to love ballot initiatives. If you haven't done so yet, please get out there and vote!