The mail-in ballot horror stories continue

Please, Mr. Postman.

Polling places across Colorado report that the voting process is going smoothly.

But there are still plenty of bumps in the road -- and Mimi Kaupe just hit one of them. Since she's working in California, she'd long ago applied to the Denver Election Division for a mail-in ballot at her Denver address. When it hadn't arrived by early last week, she called the DED and was assured one was on its way. She called again midweek.

When a mail-in ballot still hadn't arrived by last Friday, she made another call from California. The election employee she reached this time started muttering under her breath. "I can’t believe the idiots here," Mimi heard her say. When she came back on the line, the woman promised Mimi, "I’m going to Fed Ex you a ballot and you’ll get it tomorrrow morning before ten o’clock."

But it didn't arrive.

On Monday, Mimi again phoned the election division, where another worker told her, "You would not believe the people we have working here." In fact, Mimi would -- and she was getting desperate. Still in California, she wouldn't be in Colorado to cast a provisional ballot today -- and she desperately wanted to vote in this battleground state.

So today, she made her fifth call to the division and spoke to her fifth employee there. He looked at her file, muttered and then promised that within an hour, she'd have an emergency ballot faxed from the Secretary of State's office.

While she waited, she called me. I had to break the news that had she voted in our polling place today -- she lives right around the corner -- she would have been done in ten minutes. Now the clock's ticking. -- Patricia Calhoun