Vote by Mail envelopes whizzing by – catch the new video!

We’ve got new and improved video of Vote by Mail envelopes being sorted and processed by our super-speedy Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote system.

With the Feb. 5 Presidential Primary fast approaching, Vote by Mail envelopes are still arriving by the thousands at the Elections Office. About 60,000 have been returned so far. A big number, but with Relia-Vote, we can process 24,000 of them in an hour.

Check it out! (This video is posted on YouTube, which requires Adobe Flash Player to view. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free.)

 

Read more in our previous blog post about the Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote system, which helps us process and sort Vote by Mail ballot envelopes and verify voter signatures.

And all of this reminds us of an important reminder for Vote by Mail voters:

Sign up to Vote by Mail for the presidential primary

If you don’t believe that Vote by Mail is all the rage with the presidential primary around the corner, just check out today’s New York Times:

In California, the biggest prize on Feb. 5, state election officials estimate that more than half of voters may vote by mail, which has forced campaigns to adjust their strategies and has some political observers worried that people may make hasty choices they may later regret.

Mail ballots went out last week, and some campaigns have been stepping up efforts to reach voters before they open the mailbox.

 

Vote by Mail is a now a force that can not be ignored in California, and it’s not too late for you to join the ranks. More than 39 percent of San Mateo County’s registered voters have signed up to Vote by Mail permanently – 139,274 voters as of today.

“‘I think it is a reflection of people’s busy lives and the complications of child care, weather and traffic as well as the complexity of our ballots,” Secretary of State Debra Bowen told the Times. “‘Very often, there will be 10 or 15 initiatives that are so complicated, so people will sit at the kitchen table and if they get stuck on something, they can step away or they can call somebody.”‘

We wholeheartedly agree.

So why not do it? Sign up on a permanent basis or as a one-time stint for this election only. Avoid what will surely promise to be crowds at the polls on Feb. 5, given the record turnouts Iowa and New Hampshire. Make your life simpler.

We even have a retort for naysayers who worry you will cast your vote early and end up regretting it as election dynamics change: no problem!

Not your grandma’s Election Night reporting

We’ve been getting with the 21st century in more ways than one around here. Besides the blog and electronic voting machines, we’re unveiling a new more dynamic and transparent section of Shape the Future for reporting race results on Election Night and beyond.

Gone are the days when all we mustered on our Web site was pages and pages of static results for you to scroll through to find what you were looking for.

Welcome to the next generation of election results reporting. This is not your grandma’s Election Night.

Some new-fangled highlights:

Track a Contest. Only interested in following the races that matter to you? Later, scroll bar. Using a drop-down menu, chose the race that you’re interested in, click the “Track Contest” button, and voila! Instant results specific to that race. Results are broken down by voting method, and you can even see how a specific precinct voted. The page also stores your history, so you can easily toggle between races.

Lightning fast: 24,000 ballots per hour

We know. At 8:05 p.m. on Election Night, you will be looking for unofficial election results. You’ll be looking on our Web site, Shape the Future, or you’ll have the TV remote in hand and be channel surfing. You’ll want to know outcomes. And we’ll have them.

How’s that possible? It’s possible because we start processing voted Vote by Mail ballots seven working days before the election, which is today. PROCESSING. Not counting. We do not count a single vote before 8:00 p.m. We get everything ready to count. That’s called processing.

Thanks to the new thirty-eight foot long, 3,700 pound Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote machine that can process up to 24,000 ballots per hour, we are going to do this job lightening fast compared to prior elections. But it takes nearly seven passes through the machine, plus human intervention on each ballot, to get the job done.

So it’s not quite that fast. But compared to before, it’s a marvel. Observers are welcome to see this process taking place. We have every hope that, at 8:05 p.m., anyone surfing online will have a good idea of which races are close and which races are over.

For peace of mind, try this piece of (Track & Confirm) cake

So now that you’re all up to speed on how to Vote by Mail and have seen just how many San Mateo County residents are doing so – more than 20,000 by this morning’s count nearly 22,000 by this afternoon’s count – let us reiterate one point.

Piece of cake and peace of mind.

Yes, that would be Track & Confirm, the feature on our Web site that allows you to track when your Vote by Mail ballot was sent to you and when it was received by the Elections Office. Using the bar code on your ballot envelope, it works just like the tracking systems used by FedEx or UPS. 

Like we said, it’s a piece of cake. Just enter the number in your residential address, your zip code and your date of birth, and voila! Instant confirmation that your ballot didn’t go the way of the black hole. We call that part peace of mind.

We’ll even illustrate how simple it is:

To our right is an example of an actual voter’s Track & Confirm Results. After entering just three items of personal information, Track & Confirm shows that her Vote by Mail ballot was mailed to her on Oct. 9, and that the Elections Office received her voted ballot on Oct. 23.

She is all done, with nothing else to worry about, and assured that her vote will be counted on Election Day.

I feel like I should whip out my Easy Button.

We’ve got visitors!

If you have traveled around the Web world, you already know that the San Mateo County Elections Office has one of the best, most informative election Web sites in the country at www.shapethefuture.org. The site gets some serious traffic around election time.

While we know that Web traffic numbers can be misleading, take a look at recent data.  During the last two weeks, the site averaged nearly 1,200 visitors daily. This translates to more than 13,000 visitors accounting for nearly 47,000 page views.

We get these numbers and much more information from a program called Webtrends. It helps us build more content around those pages that are visited most often – the ones you find most valuable. The homepage gets the most hits, but in second place is the Youth Vote 2006 feature. This page chronicles the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971, when 18-year olds gained the right to vote.

The third most often visited page is even more heartening! This is the page that tells people how to register to vote. The Hispanic Heritage Month feature was the fourth most often visited page on the site during this period. This new feature recognized Latinos, their contributions, their organizations and more. It’s a new feature, rich in content.

Visitors will find the Voter Tool Kit on the homepage useful before heading to the polls on Election Day to do things like locate their polling place and confirm their voter registration status . Another cool tool on the homepage is Track and Confirm, which allows Vote By Mail voters to verify that the elecitons office received their voted ballot.