California is still waiting for some election results. Follow the journey of a mail ballot and the results of a vote that no one received.
This was the scene of a ballot filled with promises and prayers on Tuesday. One voter pulled out a postcard-sized piece of paper filled with the signatures of some 60,000 voters and a petition with more than 70,000 names.
“Hey there!” the voter in red wrote to me. She was hoping that I would save this note.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she wrote. “I just want to ask if you will take that part of my email signature when I do sign it. I just want to know if it’s a fake signature.”
She had been told that the signature on the ballot was for the “Election Reform Committee,” which she thought was the “official” committee.
“The secretary of state assured me that he will reject the petition,” the writer wrote. “But I don’t think he will do that.”
“I still have faith in him.”
Not long before this email exchange, we had met. I was with an election officer and a voter, both of whom were holding back their own cards.
“So we’ll see what comes of it,” they said as they waited for the ballot to print.
I asked the writer if she had been given a chance to sign her petition.
“No,” she said. “I’m not one of those who just thinks that you must have faith in the process.”
I asked her to write out the signature on that piece of paper – to make sure it was hers.
“I never had a chance to sign this thing,” she said.
“We are not going to do it,” I said.
