News Flash

Board of Elections will confirm whether they received your absentee ballot if you e mail them

If you send in your absentee ballot by mail and want to find out before early voting days or before election day whether your ballot arrived at the Board of Elections you should e mail:

BOE-West@westchestergov.com

I tested this process out after speaking with the Board of Elections last week. I mailed my absentee ballot to the Board of Elections last week. Sent an e mail to the above address yesterday and last night received confirmation that my ballot was received.   I was impressed how quickly the Board of Elections responded to my confirmation request.   I'm sure that after the e mail address is publicized they will get more e mail requests for confirmation so send in your ballots quickly and give the Board at least a few days to process the ballot.

If you mail in your ballot by absentee and if by some chance the ballot was not received you can vote on early voting days or on election day.

In many states there is a better tracking system. A few weeks ago I expressed disappointment that NYS and Westchester County aren't doing what other states have been doing regarding tracking ballots.   Col­orado sofware com­pany, i3logix, has de­vel­oped such a sys­tem that tracks mail-in bal­lots like pack­ages. North Car­olina has signed on to the sys­tem that en­ables vot­ers to track their bal­lot to make sure they ar­rive safely and are counted. Ac­cord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post (Sep­tem­ber 18), in Cal­i­for­nia there is a new elec­tion web­site, “Where’s my bal­lot.” Vot­ers type in their name, birth­day and zip code and in a minute, they are signed up for up­dates. They get a text when bal­lots are in the mail, when it’s on its way back to elec­tion of­fi­cials and even­tu­ally when it’s counted. Such a sys­tem would re­duce long lines at early vot­ing sites and on elec­tion day. It would “build con­fi­dence in democ­racy.”