Will you send it from your house?
Or vote in person with your spouse?
Drop your ballot in the mail,
And hope it’s counted without fail?
This election cycle the choices are plentiful. Candidates for offices such as planning groups, school boards, city councils and the federal legislature have been campaigning in the hope that on Nov. 3 — roughly two weeks from now — voters will choose them as representatives.
New to the list of choices, however, is the method in which those preferences will be cast.
In years past we have been afforded the opportunity to vote by absentee ballot, in person at a designated polling station on election day or at the Registrar of Voters Office.
My choice has been to vote in person. (And no, it’s not because I enjoy adhering the “I voted” stickers to my collar; in fact when asked, I turn the offer down and am met with an expression that suggests I asked for a bald eagle to be plucked and prepared as an entree to be served to alley cats.)
For me, voting is at the same time a personal and public endeavor. My choices are mine but we all (at least those who are 18 years old and not felons, according to lawmakers) have the right to engage in the process on the same day.
But 2020 is unlike any other year in my lifetime. We are mired in an airborne pandemic and the public component of voting is suddenly a little more perilous than in years past. Close contact with others outside one’s household in enclosed spaces is ill advised.
Officials have provided would-be voters with options to keep them — us — safe.
Despite what the president of the United States and the GOP would have had us believe early on, voting by mail is a viable option — after all absentee ballots have been mailed and counted for years with little trouble.
Starting Oct. 5 voters have been able to cast their ballots in person at the Registrar of Voters Office in Kearny Mesa. And state officials have also established official drop-off locations for ballots throughout the county now through election day.
And, of course, there is still the option of voting in person at the local polling station on election day.
It’s just one more choice I’ll have to weigh in this unusual election year.
I’m glad to have the options.
