I have been dying to write this post since I first received the emails, but I didn’t want to jeopardise my ability to vote in the recent US presidential elections. As a voter registered in Illinois, my vote – whichever way I cast it – would certainly not have delivered the state’s electoral college votes to Barack Obama, nor would they have taken them away from him. Illinois was his home state and that Illinois would vote for him was a foregone conclusion.
That said, you can imagine my concern when I first received an email about the status of my absentee ballot.
Review the first email.
The somewhat suspect email was followed five minutes later by an only slightly less suspect email.
In the end, I did get a ballot sent to me via email (that story will be tomorrow’s post) and I did post it off and I presume it was counted properly. But I just wonder how the conversation at the Cook County Absentee Ballot Office was on that afternoon when the first emails were sent.
Clerk: Ok, boss, I’ve sent that email about the absentee voting process to all the registered absentee voters.
Supervisor: Great! Oh … Did you make sure to proof read it – and to send it from an official email address?
Clerk: Um … do you think that’s important?
Supervisor: Yes. Very. Are you saying you didn’t send it from our official email address?
Clerk: Um …
Supervisor: Well, in that case, proof read the draft first, and then re-send it, but from our official email address. And don’t mention the first email – if we ignore it, perhaps everyone else will too.
Honestly, I feel like the two emails I was sent were part of one of those brain-teasers: how many mistakes can you spot? So, how many can you spot?
What worries me is that the first mail came from a Gmail account which means all the addresses are probably nestling in someone’s contact list; and the second is cc:ed to a Gmail account too.
‘Sho9w’ apart, I also can’t get over the fact that there is a whole Absentee Department, presumably populated by nobody since all are absentees 😉
Hi Shefaly – Yes, so not only does Google know what I search for on the internet, they also know that I am am absentee voter.
And what’s equally concerning is that the story about Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account being hacked broke just over two weeks before I received these emails. Does no one in the Cook County Absentee Department follow the news?