Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen once taught me a valuable lesson. I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18, and after four decades, voting had become perfunctory in nature to me, something I took for granted. Until Darling Allen’s office rejected my mail-in ballot in the 2018 midterm election.
I’ll admit I panicked when I got the notice in the mail shortly before Election Day. My signature on the ballot didn’t match any of my signatures on file with the county; consequently, as the notice informed me, my vote wouldn’t count until I corrected the issue. I was given until Nov. 19 to comply.
I was quite distraught with this temporary disenfranchisement, but a quick call to the registrar’s office assuaged my concern. It turned out I’d made the common mistake of neatly signing my full name as printed on the ballot instead of using my usual indecipherable signature. I sent in the correction and was later able to verify through the registrar’s web page that my vote had indeed been counted.
Imagine that: A government agency that performs efficiently! My errant signature was plucked from out of 70,000 ballots cast in Shasta County during the 2018 midterms. After I mailed in the correction, my ballot was promptly registered. That’s the sort of professionalism Darling Allen has brought to the clerk/registrar’s office during her 17 scandal-free years of service. She’s earned the respect of her peers and the public alike.
The lesson I learned from the...
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