An election nightmare could be unfolding in Berkeley, as voters in one neighborhood say they never received their mail-in ballots, in the very area where a mail carrier was robbed earlier this month.

You may have seen today’s shocking accounts of arson at ballot boxes in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, with hundreds of already-cast ballots being damaged.  

Something similarly troubling may be happening in Berkeley. NBC Bay Area had a report last week that a number of Berkeley residents had not received their mail-in ballots as of October 24, less than two weeks from Election Day. And Berkeleyside connected the dots a few days before with reports that a mail truck had been burglarized in the neighborhood, with the mail carrier saying ballots had been among the items stolen in that incident.

According to Berkeleyside’s report, the mail truck was robbed on October 9 at about 4 pm on the 3100 block of King Street. That information was confirmed by U.S. Postal Inspector Matthew Norfleet. But Berkeleyside also notes that the Berkeley Police acknowledged that the person who phoned in the robbery (likely a postal carrier) said that ballots were among the mail items stolen.

Law enforcement considered it unlikely that stealing ballots was the motivation here, someone probably just wanted to steal mail for financial gain, and perhaps ended up with ballots and a bunch of election mailer ads to boot. But the affected voters worried that someone could dishonestly vote in their name, and cancel out their legitimate vote in the process.  

"If somebody had a mind to, they could just vote fraudulently for everyone on the block," Berkeley resident Julie Chervin told NBC Bay Area.

That outlet spoke to several county election authorities who were adamant that there were many safeguards in place to prevent such fraudulent voting. Signatures on the backs of envelopes are checked for consistently with signatures on record, and mail-in ballots have barcodes to monitor their delivery, for whatever that is worth if the ballot has been stolen.

"The security around this process is extraordinary. California has one of the best procedures in place," Alameda County registrar Tim Dupuis told NBC Bay Area.

Dupuis also noted in his remarks to Berkeleyside that anyone who suspects their mail-in ballot has been stolen can report it as such to their county Registrar of Voters (in Berkeley, that phone number is 510-272-6973). You can also check the status of your mail-in ballot online to see if it’s been delivered.

You can also just head off and vote ASAP at a county elections center. Here are Alameda County’s elections centers, and San Francisco Couny’s election center is on the ground floor at SF City Hall.

Related: Outrage Grows Over Postal Carrier Robberies After Armed Robber Sentenced to Only 30 Days in Jail [SFist]

Image: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 21: Election materials are displayed on a table at the Santa Clara County registrar of voters office on October 21, 2024 in San Jose, California. Early voting for the 2024 Presidential election began on October 7th in California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Under San Francisco's current street tree policy, having a tree in front of your building can be costly. With some exceptions, the property owner is responsible for care and maintenance of the tree on top of being liable for any damage it causes — regardless of whether the property owner planted it in the first place. According to a morning press release, Supervisor Scott Wiener, with the backing of Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF), intends to introduce a ballot measure that would change this policy — passing the responsibility of tree maintenance to the city.

“Right now, more than 6,000 sidewalks in San Francisco are in need of repair because of damage caused by tree roots,” explained the Executive Director of the Friends of the Urban Forest, Dan Flanagan. “It's unacceptable that the City expects homeowners to be responsible for street trees and liable for tree-related sidewalk falls. San Francisco should maintain its street trees and sidewalks like other cities do, and that's what this measure will accomplish."

The ballot measure requires support from two-thirds of the Board of Supervisors for it to go on the November ballot, and the board has until the end of July to vote on it.

The measure is (perhaps obviously) supported by property owners in the city, who may balk at high costs associated with street-tree maintenance. “We need to fix the City's broken policy of requiring property owners to take care of street trees in front of their properties and pay for any damage they cause,” the President of Small Property Owners of San Francisco, said Noni Richen, argued. “This measure will ensure proper maintenance of these street trees without unfairly burdening certain property owners just because they have a tree in front of their property."

If approved, the cost of tree maintenance would be covered by $8 million a year from the general fund and a parcel tax that is expected to raise and additional $10.8 million annually.

According to the press release, San Francisco has around 105,000 street trees (Friends of the Urban Forest has a cool interactive map of many of them). At present, one-third of them are maintained by the city. If the measure makes it to November's ballot, and the voters pass it, the city will be responsible for all 105,000.

Related: City Decides To Take Care of Trees, Add More Greenery

A new law requiring online retailers to collect California sales tax from shoppers has stirred up controversy, and now Amazon.com Inc. is saying they are looking for voters to take the matter to the ballot. "A petition for a referendum was filed Friday with the state Attorney General's Office so that voters can decide on the requirement, which was included in a state budget signed into law in late June," explains the Sacramento Bee.

The issue isn't so much pure sales tax for Amazon, but rather how it broadens what that tax means, and asks of the business to do:

The new law forces online retailers to collect California sales taxes by expanding the definition of having a physical presence in the state. The requirement now kicks in if an online retailer has a related company, such as a marketing or product-development arm, or affiliates in the state - individuals and companies that earn commissions by referring visitors to Amazon from their websites.

Once upon a time, there were thousands of such affiliates in California, "which received fees varying from 4 percent to 15 percent of each sale they brought to the company." Now, not so much. Amazon "cut ties with them after the law's passage." Overstock.com has done the same.

The new law, and the possible ballot battle, could wind up pitting businesses against each other. California's shoppers might be compelled to make their online purchases from companies based in states where sales tax is not collected from internet sales. Major companies might wind up taking business away from smaller, Californian businesses. Plus, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have long felt that online businesses who don't charge sales tax have an unfair advantage.

If Amazon doesn't collect tax, but the law requires them too, they could wind up in Uncle Sam's doghouse: "Under the law, if Amazon fails to pay any taxes owed to California, it would be required to pay penalties and interest, like any other tax scofflaw. Its first payment would be due by Oct. 31," notes the NY Times.

Of course, getting all the 505,000 signatures needed means beating the pavement and meeting some in-the-flesh people. Maybe they will stand outside, like, actual sales-tax-collecting stores with their clipboards to get 'em. Think they're going to make it work?

80 initiatives and referenda and are out and about around the state with advocates trying to collect enough signatures so they can qualify for an upcoming election ballot. You might see people at farmers markets asking you to support the initiative for state parks or maybe you signed the one to legalize marijuana, which has already been turned in and will appear on the November ballot, pending signature verification.

A handful of new initiatives were cleared for signature gathering yesterday, the Secretary of State announced. If approved for the ballot, voters will be asked to prohibit voting for some, weaken environmental laws during high rates of unemployment and make it harder for taxes, levies and charges to be imposed by the state legislature. Here are the summaries of each:

Hey gay couples! You're in terrible danger. Fortunately, we can help. Well, not exactly -- SFist_Matt, to be specific, has taken a break from writing stern emails to Muni, and is now working on a really neat online video project to protect marriage equality.

Check out Stop8.org -- Matt's working on a series of 30-second documentary videos, explaining who California's gay spouses are, why the freedom to marry is so important to us all, and what everyone stands to lose if Prop 8 (the anti-marriage Constitutional amendment) passes in November. The Prop 8 people are going after gay marriage now -- they want is the power to control who can get married and who can't. Who knows what kind of "impure" unions they'll target next? This is an important showdown for all of us: gay, straight, and whatever.

If you're a gay couple and you'd like to help out, drop Matt a line at contact - at - stop8 - dot - org. He'd like to sit down and interview you for a half hour or so, This-American-Life-style.

And if you're not a gay couple, you can still be a part of it; create a 5-second video clip of yourself saying "I'm voting No On 8" and email it (in whatever format you like) to the same address, contact - at - stop8 - dot - org. Or take a photo of yourself with an "I'm Voting No On 8" sign and tag it noon8.

There's lots that you can do to help; so do something. Please. It's important.

Wayne Pickering (AKA, Brian McConnell), head of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco formed to honor George W. Bush -- which, at the risk of boasting, SFist was the first to tell you about back in March -- just contacted SFist to let us know that commission's ordinance initiative to changing the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility to the "George W Bush Sewage Plant" will, in fact, be on the November ballot. More details to come. Stay tuned.

Pickering was worried yesterday that they might not qualify since there was a spot check of 500 of their signatures. But that's normal since the process works like this: the power that be test 500 random signatures against the voter files. Based on said raw count, if no more than 143 of the 500 signatures (28%) are thrown out, you automatically qualify for the ballot. And: ta-da! Also, according to Wayne, "we turned in 11,999 signatures, of which 11,041 were counted in the official raw count. We need 7,168 signatures from SF voters to qualify, so we went in with over 50% more than we needed."

Congrats, craz poop plant renaming people! For the full press release, follow the jump.

Hold on there, June brides. The Secretary of State announced yesterday that an initiative to re-ban same-sex marriage in California has qualified for the November ballot. Uh oh.

The California Marriage Protection Act needed 694,354 petition signatures to get on the ballot. It 1,120,801 signatures in April. The measure, it seems, would like to protect the sacred institution of marriage.

The ban on same-sex marriage, if you recall, was overturned by the California Supreme Court just last month. Now the voters will decide. Here we go again.