When we want a mailed-in effort

According to my official Yolo County Voter Information Guide, “Elections Code section 4004 permits an all-mail ballot election to fill a vacancy on the city council in a city with a population of 100,000 or less.”

Relax all you strict constructionists of the United States Constitution. Read that sentence again and you’ll realize this is an all-mail election, not an all-male election.

The Second Amendment, however, appears to be safe.

In the last presidential election, of course, one political party argued strenuously against voting by mail and instead urged its supporters to simply show up at the polls on election day.

That party is now reassessing its position, perhaps realizing that a vote by mail is locked up and final, while an election day vote might never happen if the weather turns nasty or the voter catches the flu or has a flat tire on the way to the polls.

None of that matters, of course, in Davis, where citizens tend to respect the results of all elections, even if their candidate or ballot measure lost.

I can’t remember even one time hearing a charge of “fraud” or “rigged” in regard to any Davis balloting, including the long ago city council tie vote between incumbent Ernie Hartz and challenger John McMurdie.

That one had to be decided by a roll of the die, and it took three rolls each before McMurdie was declared the winner.

Hartz was gracious in defeat.

After all, he lost a roll of the die, he didn’t lose with the voters. That outcome will be a tie, and nothing but a tie, forevermore.

We had another City Council election where the final seat was awarded with a difference of just nine votes between winner and loser. Again, no one cried fraud. In fact, the winner and the loser went out for a beer together.

“A complete list of candidates appears on your Practice Ballot printed in this guide.”

That complete list includes just two names. I don’t know if I’ll need to “practice” with this ballot or if I can just remember who it is I wanted to vote for.

Now here’s the part I really like.

“The candidate statements of qualifications printed in this Voter Information Guide are written by the candidates and printed at their own expense. Statements are optional and published exactly as submitted.”

I don’t know how the county can say for sure that the statements were written by the candidates. More likely they were written by the most capable person on the candidate’s campaign committee.

I especially like that they are published as submitted.

Full disclosure: on several occasions I have been asked to proofread the Voter Information Guide from start to finish, this request coming after I complained that “governor” had been misspelled in a previous election guide.

I was told specifically before beginning this task that the candidate statements were not subject to my scrutiny, even if they misused “lay” or “lie,” inserted Oxford commas and exclamation points, and claimed that Davis gets 100 inches of rain per year due to global warming.

Nothing could be touched and no candidate could be alerted of an error in time to correct it, even if their own name had been misspelled.

“Municipal offices are non-partisan offices. Qualified political parties can endorse candidates only for voter-nominated offices.”

You could fool me, because at this very moment I’m staring at a postcard from one District 3 candidate who claims she is “Endorsed by the Yolo County Democratic Party.”

But maybe in Davis — and only in Davis — the Democratic Party is considered to be non-partisan. Party on.

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net.