Plaidophile

Back in March, I moved from one neighborhood to another.

A few weeks ago I got this postcard:

so of course I immediately filled out and returned the form.

A few days ago I checked my voting status:

and I was rather shocked. So I looked up the registration information, and found:

In general, you must register at least 30 days in advance of an election to be eligible to vote in that election. It is especially important to remember this deadline if you are registering by mail. Your application must be postmarked by the 30-day cutoff or it will not become effective until after the election.

so I looked for a postmark on the initial postcard: which, as near as I can make out, is October 14 (at least, that's the date the USPS processed the forwarding).

October 14 is, of course, less than 30 days before November 7.

If I'd known about the need to update my voter registration I'd be voting today.

As far as I can tell I'm not even eligible for a provisional ballot (again, because of this 30-day cutoff which was essentially applied retroactively even though I'd registered a year and a half ago). Meh.

Democracy!

(Of course, I should have called 296-VOTE when I got the postcard, but I didn't know about the 30-day cutoff.)

8:58 PM On the plus side, the important things I cared most about are, so far, turning out in the way that I would have voted, at least as per the votes which have been tallied so far. Maria Cantwell is returning to the senate, there will be no repeal of the estate tax, and no concessions will be made to land owners who have been blocked from using their land due to conservation. Then there were a bunch of things I wasn't particularly clear on which are in various states of being.