[conspire] Postal voting, continued.

[Nick Moffitt]

There are a number of ways to deliver an overseas ballot to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.  The most reliable, hilariously, is by fax machine.  If anyone has a good way to do this over t'Internet, I'm all ears! (I remember tpc.int advertised this back in the day, but it always seemed like a combination sneaky-novel-TLD-user/President's Analyst fan site: https://youtu.be/s2NNZdigSXg)


The second most reliable way to do this is via certain high-priced express courier companies.  These used to provide extremely deluxe service for your money, and took pride in their speed and quality of service.  Alas, the fast-based delivery economy had begun to exert pressures on the actual delivery staff even before 2020, and the various lockdowns worldwide only accelerated that over the past year and a half.

So it was with alarm that we saw that our carefully-addressed envelope to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters had a delivery receipt that said "PHARMACY" for the destination, and listed a man's full name as the signatory.  We called the intended destination to see if the staff there knew this as any sort of common mistake, and could reassure us in some way.  They were horrified and told us to chase the courier.

We did, to no avail.  The person on the other end of the phone had never even heard of an international dialing country prefix, and could not reliably take down our phone numbers.  It was clear that the best we were going to get from them was an "investigation" that would e-mail us a pretty report after the election was concluded, saying that our documents had been successfully delivered to the pharmacy and thank you for trusting your precious documents to our high-quality services.


Through frenzied investigation, we realised that we could be a mere few degrees of separation from the man whose name was on our slip.  If he was who we thought he was, he was someone who handled legal records for a living, and was in the employ of someone we had had the briefest of professional encounters with.

Possibilities we considered:

	1. The ballots were sent to a pharmacy through laziness or clerical error.  We'd never see them again.
	2. The ballots were delivered correctly, and the courier fat-fingered an autocarroted app to confirm delivery, or copied another record in a hurry so that the next delivery could be made.
	3. The courier was a rabid anti-vaxxer who wanted to ensure a recall, the signatory was made up or copied from another delivery, and the word "pharmacy" was some sort of taunt.
	4. There was, somehow, a pharmacy that had offered its capacities (once used for vaccine logistics) as a staging facility to help ensure the ballots arrived in an orderly fashion.  The phone rep we spoke to was merely unfamiliar with this particular site.
	5. Our possibly-FOAF records-handling recipient was deputised by the Registrar of Voters somehow, and was officially charged with the collation and delivery of certain overseas ballots.

We called friends who still live in the Bay Area, and talked about what *could* be done to investigate this on foot before sundown.  We reached out to the man we thought *could* be our signatory.

And then, while on the phone with our old friend Scott McNeil, who had introduced us when we first worked together at SuSE USA, I got e-mail confirmation of delivery (quoted below).

Shortly after this good news arrived, we got a call back from the man we had chased, believing him to be the one who had taken delivery of our ballots.  He had indeed received them in error; and before he even knew we'd been trying to find him, he'd run them down to deliver them by hand.  If you need a professional legal records handler and all-around Good Citizen in Oakland, I have a name.

When I woke up this morning, I had the second confirmation (also below, but note the MDT instead of PDT time zone, and the Denver address for the BallotTrax company) that my ballot had been counted.  I suspect that these mails were triggered by systems that did their best with my A4 printout of my US Letter sized ballot PDF, scanned the QR code, and updated records.



	But you know, they really could have chosen a better domain name than CABALlottrax.com...




----- Forwarded message from Alameda County Registrar of Voters <acvoteds at gmail.com> -----

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2021 11:44:53 -0700
From: Alameda County Registrar of Voters <acvoteds at gmail.com>
Subject: Nicholas, we have recieved your UOCAVA ballot succesfully!

Hello Nicholas,

We received your UOCAVA ballot succesfully.

When My Voter Profile indicates "YOUR VOTE BY MAIL BALLOT WAS
RECEIVED" you have been credited.

Use the link below to visit My Voter Profile
https://www.acgov.org/rovmvp_app/mvp.do

**DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL**

----- End forwarded message -----

----- Forwarded message from BallotTrax Notifications <updates at caballottrax.com> -----

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2021 19:14:54 -0600
From: BallotTrax Notifications <updates at caballottrax.com>
Subject: September 14, 2021, Gubernatorial Recall Election: Ballot Counted
Reply-To: Alameda County Registrar of Voters <ballot.trax at acgov.org>

Hello NICHOLAS MOFFITT,

This is a message from Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Your ballot for the September 14, 2021, Gubernatorial Recall Election was received and counted. Thank you for voting! 
  
 Questions? Call (510) 272-6973 or email ballot.trax at acgov.org.
  
 Visit https://www.acvote.org/index for election information.

"Where’s My Ballot?" is a service of the California Secretary of State through your county election office. This service is powered by BallotTrax, 9501 Northfield Blvd | Denver, CO 80238.

----- End forwarded message -----