Voting By Mail: The Perfect Solution

Voting by mail is becoming more popular in more places.
The growing popularity of ballot-by-mail is one of the arguments against the proposal to drop one day of mail delivery to save the U.S. Postal Service money.

Voting by mail has many pluses. Also, sometimes, some minuses.

Members of the American Postal Workers Union, for obvious reason, elect their national officers via mail ballot. Most postal clerks, who sort the mail, belong to the union. Their union brothers with the National Association of Letter Carriers deliver the mail. And their track record, considering the massive daily mail volume, is very good.

Most of the time.

Unlike many unions where national leaders decide which presidential candidate the union will back, postal unions let their members make the choice. Again by mail ballot.

Normally the APWU election committee would be counting ballots this week, at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel downtown. But there has been a problem. So far only 39,071 ballots have been received which is only a small percentage of the union's membership and a much lower total than in past elections.

So what happened to all those mail ballots?

You got it!

They seem to be lost in the mail.

According to the union a lot of members say they haven't received their ballots. So...

They've extended the voting deadline to Oct. 14.