Bent Trillium

Received an e-mail over the weekend w/ a ballot image on it for next month's election. The Government Election Accountability Board (GAB) had approved us to print it out and send to our absentee voters. It had the word "Winner" in place of the name for the Democratic Governor candidate. (It also had "Winner" for the Dem Lt. Governor candidate.) Decided to wait until this afternoon and made a special trip to the court house to pick up the official ballots.   These "official" ballots had "District" spelled wrong and some other minor errors but I decided those mistakes weren't probably going to sway any one's voting decision. Tonight was Absentee Ballot training at the Court house. The absentee rules used to be very straightforward and logical. The new laws (yes, the state legislature is changing the rules in the middle of a year when we have six elections) aren't either. At two points during the training session when there was a conflict in what the law states and what the GAB wants us to do, the county clerk told us to use our best judgement - just don't tell anyone that she told us that. Pretty sad when you need to make sure the government doesn't realize you used common sense.