Hospital board game
It is an age-old truism that you can't tell the players without a scorecard, with a modern version propagated by the hospital election monitor Julie Yaden that you can't lose an election if you don't hold an election.
One way to not hold an election is to not mail out the ballots. Another way is to so severely delay the mailing of the ballots they are finally received after the official election day. Another way is to slightly less severely delay the mailing of the ballots such that people living out of town are unable to return them in time by mail. We are currently in that window - I haven't checked to see if in-town ballots have been placed in in-town mailboxes today, but my informal poll of 10 folks last evening indicated no one had received theirs as of yesterday, thus placing a larger and larger segment of the voting pool at increasing risk of disenfranchisement.
Let's be honest, no one except Dave Batey's wife would be particularly perturbed if they were unable to vote for hospital board this time around, but hospital administrators should at least provide a patina of reliable excuses for why the ballots still haven't arrived for a May 8 election as of May 1. The fact that three separate individuals (board members or hospital administrators) gave excuses at the April 30 board meeting indicates a general message went out beforehand to appear puzzled, but it's hard in the age of high-throughput desktop printers and satellite tracking to have real sympathy for why a one-page ballot containing two printed names and some blank lines beneath would need to be produced in California (if this was indeed the case) or was somehow in limbo, destination and location unknown, weeks after being mailed from California (if this was indeed the case). My own personal belief is that the board, cornered into having to live up to a promise, made before the filing date cutoff, to have a mail-in election, wanted to demonstrate they could still have their way by claiming they had lived up to this promise to conduct a mail-in election without ever actually mailing out the ballots, thus forced last minute by some crazy unpredictable circumstances (like not mailing out the ballots) to hold an "emergency" (and much less expensive) walk-in election.
So Julie et al. were pretty laissez faire about getting the ballots into the voting community's mailboxes in a timely fashion, but you can bet your bottom dollar they won't be as forgiving about improperly filled-out ballots, when or if they arrive.
Any write-in that isn't a certified write-in will lead to an automatic rejection of the entire ballot, even if the other vote for another candidate was properly cast. Any misspelling of any certified write-in candidate's (there is only one) name will result in an automatic rejection of the vote for that candidate. Any additional letters or extraneous prefixed or suffixed titles provided for that candidate will result in an automatic rejection of the vote for that candidate. Again, it won't really matter, because the outcome is already clear, especially when the rank and file don't receive ballots, but it will just send a message of how no upstart should consider speaking out against those appointed to hold power. The penalties are obvious: Bruce died, Bert's dirty laundry was hung out again in full view, Linda was denied work at the hospital. Who dares arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz?
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| One possibility is the ballots were printed in Italy, and have yet to make it through customs |
One way to not hold an election is to not mail out the ballots. Another way is to so severely delay the mailing of the ballots they are finally received after the official election day. Another way is to slightly less severely delay the mailing of the ballots such that people living out of town are unable to return them in time by mail. We are currently in that window - I haven't checked to see if in-town ballots have been placed in in-town mailboxes today, but my informal poll of 10 folks last evening indicated no one had received theirs as of yesterday, thus placing a larger and larger segment of the voting pool at increasing risk of disenfranchisement.
Let's be honest, no one except Dave Batey's wife would be particularly perturbed if they were unable to vote for hospital board this time around, but hospital administrators should at least provide a patina of reliable excuses for why the ballots still haven't arrived for a May 8 election as of May 1. The fact that three separate individuals (board members or hospital administrators) gave excuses at the April 30 board meeting indicates a general message went out beforehand to appear puzzled, but it's hard in the age of high-throughput desktop printers and satellite tracking to have real sympathy for why a one-page ballot containing two printed names and some blank lines beneath would need to be produced in California (if this was indeed the case) or was somehow in limbo, destination and location unknown, weeks after being mailed from California (if this was indeed the case). My own personal belief is that the board, cornered into having to live up to a promise, made before the filing date cutoff, to have a mail-in election, wanted to demonstrate they could still have their way by claiming they had lived up to this promise to conduct a mail-in election without ever actually mailing out the ballots, thus forced last minute by some crazy unpredictable circumstances (like not mailing out the ballots) to hold an "emergency" (and much less expensive) walk-in election.
So Julie et al. were pretty laissez faire about getting the ballots into the voting community's mailboxes in a timely fashion, but you can bet your bottom dollar they won't be as forgiving about improperly filled-out ballots, when or if they arrive.
Any write-in that isn't a certified write-in will lead to an automatic rejection of the entire ballot, even if the other vote for another candidate was properly cast. Any misspelling of any certified write-in candidate's (there is only one) name will result in an automatic rejection of the vote for that candidate. Any additional letters or extraneous prefixed or suffixed titles provided for that candidate will result in an automatic rejection of the vote for that candidate. Again, it won't really matter, because the outcome is already clear, especially when the rank and file don't receive ballots, but it will just send a message of how no upstart should consider speaking out against those appointed to hold power. The penalties are obvious: Bruce died, Bert's dirty laundry was hung out again in full view, Linda was denied work at the hospital. Who dares arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz?
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