Sample ballots in the mail – what is your opinion on that?

I looked in my mailbox this morning and at some point this week, my Mailman dropped two sample ballots from Jerry Holland in there. Jerry Holland is our supervisor of elections here in Duval county, he has to oversee the voting process for the 524,239 registered voters here, number as of 8-14-2010. Every time we receive our sample ballots, I remember back to the 2000 election, I was in Ohio at my Sisters watching the start of what would become the dangling chad debacle of that election. We may have gotten sample ballots before that but I do not remember, we sure have gotten them since then.

Sample ballots, the whole concept seems odd to me. I am a pretty easy going guy but sample ballots is one thing that just plain and simple pisses me off. In a county with over half a million-registered voters what could all of that cost and what is the purpose. In my sample ballot was 2 sheets of paper, one of which is has printing on both sides and one with printing on only one side. The envelope is printed as well, with two colors and it has the little window in it. and then we have the cost to mail them.  So what does that cost us, the taxpayers? In a day when we are cutting Fire and Police and School and everything else from the city budget why are we spending money on sample ballots? There is a lot of good information on the sheet, the dates of the election, early voting instructions as well as information about precinct changes. On the reverse side it also has a voter checklist, the voter bill of rights and the voter responsibilities. It even shows me how to fill in the little rectangular field with rounded corners, I am not to check it or X it I am to fill it in completely.

Really, really we need to be treated like 5 year olds, how many of us have not taken a test or voted or any number of other things where we had to fill in those fields with a number 2 pencil. Hell, even the lotto has cards we fill out in that manner and we are not given any instructions what so ever and still we seem to manage with lotto, don’t we. This all goes back, I think, to the dangling chads of that fateful 2000 election. Because some folks in an south Florida county were whipped into a hysteria by the mechanisms of the political parties about the potential that they may have voted incorrectly we Floridians we all dubbed idiots. I can see why to with actual idiots like this guy,

staring at the chads.  Was it depressed, or was it ever touched it is no wonder the country and the world wondered what the hell is wrong with Floridians.

Is the information in the sample ballot useful, sure I suppose it is to someone BUT, does the usefulness outweigh the money we taxpayers have to spend to put them out? In my opinion HELL NO!!!! As a taxpaying member of our city I am vehemently opposed to them. I hate to say this but if you are to stupid to understand how to use a ballot you most likely have done ZERO research into the people who are even on the ballot and might be seeing the names for the first time and in my humble opinion they should lose their right to vote. Yeah, I said it, too stupid to work the ballot than you are rejected and should be physically ejected from the polling place. Even more so if you do not ask a question of the folks who are there to assist us with voting. NO, they will wait until they leave and bump into a politico performing exit polling to be told that they may have voted for the wrong guy. That would be the equivalent of me saying no, those are not the number I wanted on the lotto ticket, after the drawing. It is bullshit plain and simple.

Anyway, I am upset about our city cutting this and cutting that and adding this fee or that charge and still wasting money to help people understand how to vote and I want it to stop! Dangling chads be damned! What do you think?