Honey Look, My Ballot Envelope Has a Hole

Last Sunday, I thought of spending at least a part of the weekend to vote. I unpacked the ballots, read the booklet, contemplated the choices to make ... and, since I was planning to vote early by making a deposit to the ballot box, I looked at the envelope too.  Once in the past, I made a mistake while filling in the envelope, and I wanted to make it right this time on the first attempt.

The envelope had circle hole through it, which I thought was there for the purpose of indicating whether the envelope has something in it.  When I folded the ballots and inserted them in the envelope to check how things fit, I noticed that "Trump" choice from the ballot showed up right in that hole, and remained visible. It showed up the same way when I flipped the ballots, because the name and the hole both happened to be centered from both sides of the envelope.  It caught my eye, and made me spend the rest of my weekend thinking if this is an issue worth talking about. I concluded that it does, and, with the hopes that the practice will be avoided for the benefit of all participants involved, I share my thoughts here.

How the legal profession can come to a halt, and what you can do to keep on going

For almost the entire day yesterday, Thomson Reuters Westlaw was down. I am using it since 2009 and this was the first time I have experienced the outage there, overall a pretty good indicator of the things working 99% of the time. Suddenly being leaving me without my research tool, it was a powerful reminder that nothing is guaranteed to be ever-present and available for us online, and with our dependency on it, it is scary to think about the "what if" situation. This made me think of two things: that the progress in our profession could be curbed, and that we should take those contingencies into account if we wish to keep on going.

The requirement of the additional 10-day notice in San Francisco is eliminated (SFRO 37.9(o))

The Covid-era additional requirement for an eviction notice in San Francisco was imposed by the Ordinance 18-22 in early 2022 and remained on the books since then, even though it was trimmed a bit later that year by the San Francisco Apartment Association winning against the application of the additional 10-days notice for an eviction for non-payment of rent. As of September 11, 2024, the entire ordinance now is seemingly on its way out, with SFAA winning its on its appeal.