Why I Oughta...

 Earlier this week, I received this text message letting me know that my ballot was received by the Clerk's office at DuPage County and has 'been processed'.  It came via the BallotTrax system that they are using for mail-in voting this year.   Have to say that the system is pretty great and gave me a lot of confidence that my ballot both was on the way to me AND that it had been received by the County for counting. BallotTrax bills itself like this : BallotTrax is designed to track mail ballots and absentee ballots through the postal stream and proactively push ballot status notifications to voters, thus increasing election visibility and vendor accountability.  By integrating with State and/or County election offices, print vendors and USPS, BallotTrax knows when a ballot has been printed and mailed to a voter, returned from a voter, received by the election office and accepted for counting by the election office. I've made it pretty clear that I don't love go...

With the close of one convention and the start of another one next week, I suppose it is time to remind anyone who is reading this blog post that, if they live in DuPage County, they should get on the stick and request their mail-in ballot.   The county has made it pretty easy - just head here to the DuPage Election Authority's page where you fill out a form with your name, Date of Birth and SSN .   The County Clerk also sent out this mailer that explains what they have planned for this year - and included instructions on the application.  But, she's also touting that - at some point later this year - you'll be able to 'track your vote-by-mail ballot', which is promising.  I will admit that my disposition is to not really like or admire the government, but if they can make tracking my ballot as easy as I can track my order from DoorDash or Uber Eats, I'll be pretty impressed.  The last day to request a mail-in ballot in DuPage County is ...

(image removed by me in late 2022 because it showed kids faces) Six years ago today, I posted her on the blog about our friend and neighbor Dannee Polomsky winning her first seat on the Elmhurst City Council and I showed a photo of the then 2-year-old Babe who came with us to vote.    Fast forward those six years and you'll see this animated image above of me and all three kids outside of our polling place from Tuesday.  We didn't get to vote for my sister (she's up north from here), but we did have a handful of races that were contested. Glad to have brought the kids along and they got to wield their own dry erase ballots to vote between the Cubs and Sox and Leno and Letterman.  I think we've brought them to the polls every time we've gone, so we're doing our little part to do as Neil Steinberg called it yesterday : our little 'act of faith' in democracy. My little sacrifice of time, some drops of routine life sprinkled on the altar of democracy...

These are a few of the posters that have gone up recently around the office that are urging all of us at Edelman to make sure we get out and vote on Election Day .  They've even incentivized us by having the office 'open' at 11:30 am central that day and by bribing us with donuts.  The puns just write themselves, it seems. And Edelman isn't alone.  There's a trend happening on Election Day.   From this Digiday story : A variety of agencies, from Edelman and Day One to AKQA and Walton Isaacson, are doing everything from letting employees work remotely to delaying opening their offices until later in the day in a bid to encourage them to vote. For Edelman, flexibility just didn’t cut it. When the agency polled its employees about the biggest barriers stopping them from getting to the polls, time fared top of the list. Agency executives realized that even with flexible time off to vote, it was still difficult for staffers to juggle work, polls, childcare and...

We start 'em young at the Parrillo household. If you read our family blog (which you most likely don't!), you've seen a few of the photos over the years of the girls on this very important day in our house:  election day.  I think I've chronicled (over there) every time we've taken them to the polls. For some history from this blog: Here's a photo of  the Babe back in 2010 when she voted for the 2nd time. And  here's the first time The Babe came to the polling place back in 2010 when she was just a month old . After all these years of supporting Tom Cross, we got our first chance to vote for him on the ballot.  It felt nice!

This morning, Nat and I took both of our girls to vote at Elmhurst City Hall.  And...I'll have you note that I took both girls into the booth with me so they can see the *right* way to cast their ballots.  In Illinois, that typically means voting for losers. They were both incredibly well behaved!  As a result, they both got their "I Voted!" stickers. Here's a photo of The Babe as a first-time voter in February of 2010 . Here's a photo of The Babe as a second-time voter in November of 2010 . Here's a photo of The Babe as a third-time voter in April of 2011 . And...there's no photo of her at the polling place from earlier this spring.  But...trust me!  She was there!

First....Dannee Polomsky won!  Yahoo!  Congrats to Dannee and her family! Now...on to the voter post:  The Babe is getting very experienced at voting!  This was her third time at our polling place in Elmhurst.  Here she was at just a little older than one month old in February of 2010 and here she is in November of last year at 11 months old.  She's not likely going to remember any of these voting experiences, but it certainly brings a new perspective to voting for me:  the candidates we're electing today are going to shape the Elmhurst of tomorrow that the Babe is going to grow up in.