Across San Diego County, more than 145 drop boxes are placed to receive ballots, which California mailed to all registered voters. Today, the state held primary elections, including President of the United States. Fifteen other states commenced primaries on this Super Tuesday.
My wife and I unexpectedly used a drop box, rather than continue our customary practice of voting in person. Annie felt poorly, and I am juggling family matters. We don’t expect Dad to live through the week. But he is still conscious and cognizant, receives visitors (whoa, the county sheriff, among many others), or makes and receive phone calls. But Dad’s strength and vitality ebb away, and his decline increases. My sister was right urging us both to fly to Maine—she from Florida—over the weekend of Feb. 16, 2024.
Today, Dad made arrangements for a family to take his two Shih Tzu. Disposition of the family farm, purchased by my great-grandparents in 1895, is more tenuous. Dad plans to leave the property to the pastors of the community church, but some hurdles could stumble that plan after he passes. I am curious about the outcome; it’s not a transaction that involves me.
Okay, that reason for dropping off mail-in ballots put aside, state of the drop box rather bothered me: Unmonitored. At the one here in University Heights, no one watched to ensure that people casting ballots deposited their own or to prevent stuffing the drop box with harvested or fraudulent ballots. Such security oversight diminishes my confidence in the integrity of California’s mail-in ballots.
The Featured Image, taken today using Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, presents the ballot drop box in all its unmonitored glory. Vitals: f/1.7, ISO 12, 1/370 sec, 23mm (film equivalent); 4:17 p.m. PST.