A relative of mine has lived in a suburban California county since last May and made sure that she was registered to vote at her new address, since she always votes. She has been living there now continuously except for about ten days in July when she went on vacation.
But when she didn't get her California absentee ballot last week in a timely manner, she called the county elections office, which explained in the most patronizing manner that she had been very legally excluded from voting based on information they had received from U.S. Postal Service!
(more on the flip)
During her vacation in July, she had put a "temporary hold" on her mail with the US Postal Service. As she now recalls, upon returning from vacation she may have had to call the Post Office to get it flowing again, but in any event, since then she has been getting the usual letters, bills and circulars in her mailbox daily.
Yet when she went to the elections office with a fistful of recent bills and other missives delivered to the mailbox of her current address, she had to make a bit of a scene to avoid getting "a provisional ballot with no guarantees." Worse, she got snide intimations of paranoia and no straight answer from the officials, when she asked how such a situation could have happened. "It's not our problem...take it up with the Post Office." "But, yes, we are legally empowered to strike voters based on information we receive from them."
How has the USPS become the Kafkaesque enforcer of limiting our rights to vote? Is this yet another part of the Bush HAVA Act (the No Paper Trail Left Behind Act)?
Can anyone tell me why more attention is not being paid to this unpublicized, unaccountable, and apparently ongoing denial of voting rights by the US Postal Service?