Some ideas on voting

First, vote in person, on Election Day. If the county sends you a mail-in ballot, fill it out, bring it, but leave it in your car. If the lines are too long, you can always deposit your mail-in ballot in the blue urn, but please try to vote in person. That action will send a message to the Legislature that we are serious about getting rid of mail-in voting.

Get the Votifynow app for your phone so that you can report anything that goes wrong. (There are other reporting sites that are legitimate but I know the people at Votifynow.) If the polling location claims you have already voted, call the sheriff.

Use a blue ball-point. This has nothing to do with smearing or bleeding-through. Marks made with black felt-tips are very hard to distinguish from marks made by machine. If there is a forensic audit, we want to be able to distinguish marks made by humans from those made by machine.

In the notes I concentrate on the races that I had to research. Many of the Republican candidates are less-than-inspiring but I fear their Democrat opponents will be quite destructive. We must simplify our ballot if we are ever to get rid of the counting machines. The races that require research are often also races that don’t belong on the ballot.

Until we are allowed to know how these counting machines work, I am adopting an extra precaution that I hope turns out to be barmy: I fear not voting invites someone else to fill in the ovals. It is not much more work to fill in all the ovals so that can’t happen.

I hope this helps someone.