GET READY: The June 2 election is less than five weeks away, and our ballots are about to arrive in the mailbox. Election season is about to roar into gear.
The old adage “Vote early, vote often” springs to mind with the stubborn insistence of a bad TV commercial. This expression hearkens back to the good old days when the naked corruption of our election system was celebrated and a person’s vote could be secured for a shot of rotgut. The line is loosely but frequently attributed to Al Capone, Chicago’s colorfully bloodthirsty Gangster-in-Chief who back in the days of Prohibition had easy access to oceans of the aforementioned rotgut.
In the Welsh family mythology, my grandmother danced with Al Capone in Miami back in the roaring 1920s. My grandmother always claimed she didn’t know who Capone was. She might even have been telling the truth. But maybe he knew who she was; her nickname, after all, was “Mugsy.”
Capone, by the way, died of syphilis, a disease he contracted from one of his many thousands of prostitutes. The gangster-pimp famous for beating a dinner guest to death with a baseball bat for some betrayal real or imagined was mortally afraid, it turns out, of needles. He adamantly refused the medical treatment — albeit primitive — then available. I remember once, in a science class, seeing a human skull of a syphilis victim. You don’t forget something like that. It looked as if 1,000 termites had bored a million tiny holes through the bone and into the brain. When Capone died in prison, his mind was gone. His associates gave serious thought to rubbing him out; he might unknowingly say something he shouldn’t.
This does call to mind the bellicose megalomania of our current Caligula-in-Chief, though to be clear, I am not saying, implying, or insinuating a diagnosis of syphilis. That exceeds my level of medical competence. But if his skull were to be riddled with worm holes, I would take some degree of comfort.
It would, at least, offer a reasonable explanation for his behavior.
What I am saying, implying, and insinuating, however, is this: Vote.
No, do not vote often. But absolutely vote early.
Why? The United States Postal Service changed the rules about how mail-in ballots will get collected, postmarked, and eventually counted on Christmas Eve 2024. This had a profound effect on the number of ballots that can now be rejected.
Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots that were disqualified because of these changes increased by 400 percent between 2024 and 2025.
That’s a lot.
In Santa Barbara County, it was way worse. In 2024, before the rules were changed, Santa Barbara County had 179 mail-in-ballots rejected because of lateness. After the ballot rules were changed, in the 2025 special election about redistricting, we had 2,647 tossed for the same reason. That’s a 1,500 percent increase.
California county elections officers are required to count every mail-in ballot bearing a postmark for the day of the election, even votes that straggle in as late as seven days.
But the new postal rules are stricter: If it’s not postmarked June 2, county election workers can’t count it. For example, if you drop your ballot in a mailbox on June 2 — Election Day — and postal workers aren’t able to postmark it that same day- it’s not counted. The same is true if you put your ballot envelope in your own mailbox for pickup that day, and it doesn’t get picked up in time to get postmarked, it’s not counted.
Yes, this year’s field of 10 candidates for governor would leave anyone perplexed and bewildered. Certainly, we are. Sorting them all out takes time. And if you’re hoping to exert maximum body English on the election’s outcome by waiting until the last possible second to tip the scales, forget about it. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Guess what — it never did.
If you wait, your vote may not get counted and you will be tossed into the dustbin of history.
What we do know is that Donald Trump is doing everything possible — including violating the Constitution if necessary — to abolish mail-in voting. He has repeatedly claimed mail-in voting is “cheating,” even though he does it himself.
This March, in fact, Trump cast a mail-in ballot in a state assembly election in Miami, where he’s registered to vote. He told reporters at the time he did so because as president, he was too busy doing the people’s business in the nation’s capital. But it turned out, Trump was actually in Miami playing golf on the day his mail-in ballot was received and counted. Maybe he was lying. But maybe it was all the bore holes in his skull, and Trump simply forgot.
You should get your ballot May 4. Don’t let it get lost with all your other clutter. To be safe, get it in the mail within the week. Better yet, personally walk your ballot to one of the 18 drop boxes located throughout the county. Or, if you want to be super safe, show up on Election Day at any polling place in person and personally drop off your ballot. You can savor that whole old-school, in-the-flesh vibe.
When you’re done, you can buy yourself a drink. Tell them Mugsy sent you.
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