Save Our Community was founded in the movement to resist Wal-Mart's development in Rosemead, California. Now, it has become a general site for news, information, gossip, talk, and blogging about Rosemead. We also have stories about South San Gabriel, San Gabriel, Montebello, and occasionally about Pico Rivera, El Monte, South El Monte, Alhambra, Temple City, and other nearby communities. Your host is Todd. If you want a blog just sign up, get approved, and start writing. Good posts will be moved onto the home page.
Whose votes weren't counted?
About 2,000 Rosemead residents requested vote by mail ballots. Over 100 of the vote by mail ballots that were returned were NOT counted. That's FIVE PERCENT.
What's even worse about this is that your vote may have been among those not counted, and no one would even tell you this!
I'll say that again: You might *think* you're registered because you've been voting absentee these past few elections. You send in your request for a vote by mail ballot, and you get the ballot in the mail, you fill it out, you send it back, you think it's been counted. But, for five percent of Rosemead's requesters, it was not.
There are several possible reasons why your vote was not counted. Here's one you may not have even considered: The vote by mail ballot is sent to you without first confirming that you're registered with precisely that name at the address you indicate. So even receiving a ballot in the mail doesn't mean you're registered! You might *think* you're registered because you received the ballot. But you may not be. And no one bothers to tell you this, so the pattern may be repeated election after election.
For others, you may have even voted in person in several elections. You may have once been a registered voters. But apparently some voters were purged from the rolls. And, again, it appears that, if you were purged, no one tells you.
Or suppose you're like a lot of Asian voters and you often put your family surname first. Or if you 'adopt' an Americanized first name: "Don" instead of "Dong," for example. An inconsistency in the name or a misinterpretation of your family name or a variation in how you sign your name versus how the registrar has you registered can cause a snag in your voter verification that prevents your vote from being counted.
As I previously said, the more I learn about how the voting system works, the more it becomes clear that hundreds of Rosemead residents are being systematically disenfranchised.