Pierce County officials hope a high percentage of county residents access information on where to get a flu shot and then get one.
In 2020, with COVID-19, flu shots are crucial for several reasons. For instance, the symptoms of the flu and COVID are so similar that the healthcare system may become overloaded with people who don’t know if they have coronavirus or the flu.
That’s why Pierce County has launched the “Spread Love, Not the Flu†campaign, and findyourflushot.com, which can help find the closest provider of flu vaccinations.
The goal is to have 70 percent of Pierce County residents six months and older get a flu shot. Last year, an estimated 51 percent were immunized, according to Ken Farmer, director of the county’s Office of Disaster Recovery.
He said Pierce County will provide free flu shots at pop-up clinics in the near future. In the meantime, free drive-thru locations for shots are available, as well as providers that accept health insurance.
“Getting a flu shot in 2020 is more important than ever because COVID-19 is already putting many people in danger. Adding flu season to the equation increases the risk for everyone,†Farmer said. “Not only is there increased risk to us as individuals, but not having flu shots also puts our healthcare system at risk of getting overwhelmed.â€
Bob DeWald is a longtime volunteer with AARP and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Redmond resident Bob DeWald has been selected as the 2020 recipient of the AARP Washington Andrus Award for Community Service — the association’s most prestigious and visible state volunteer award for community service.
AARP Washington selected DeWald for his remarkable service, which has benefitted the community, supported AARP’s vision and mission, and inspired other volunteers.
A longtime community volunteer with several organizations, including 14 years with AARP, DeWald has tirelessly devoted his time and efforts to improve the lives of others. Within the AARP community, he is a well-known and much sought-after speaker, delivering hundreds of presentations across the state on everything from consumer fraud to brain health. As a lead presenter, he has taken many new volunteer speakers under his wing, offering mentorship and guidance, co-presenting as they become familiar with the topics, and providing presentation guidance to ensure a successful event.
For years, DeWald went above and beyond as a volunteer with Washington’s Statewide Health Insurance Benefits Advisors (SHIBA), counseling people of all ages and backgrounds to help them navigate the often confusing and ever-changing healthcare options across the state.
A veteran himself (active and reserve Navy from 1957 to 1963), DeWald has continued to give back to his country and fellow veterans as a volunteer with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Employer Support of the Guard and Reserves (ESGR). The program promotes cooperation and understanding between civilian employers and their National Guard and Reserve employees. DeWald held every position within the ESGR Washington State Chapter and was awarded the Medal for Exceptional Public Service four years in a row. His volunteer duties include briefing employers and educating the troops before and after deployments to ensure that their jobs and benefits would be immediately available when they return.
A component of the AARP Washington Andrus Award includes a $2,000 donation to the recipient’s non-profit organization of choice. DeWald has selected two organizations–the Kaiser Permanente Foundation and Unity of Bellevue. Each will receive a check for $1,000 to support their missions.
“This award acts as a symbol to the public that we can all work together for positive social change,†said AARP Washington director Doug Shadel. “AARP has long valued the spirit of volunteerism and the important contributions volunteers make to their communities, neighbors, and the programs they serve.â€
Andrus Award recipients across the nation were chosen for their ability to enhance the lives of AARP members and prospective members, improve the community in or for which the work was performed, and inspire others to volunteer.
Christina Clem, who wrote this article, is a communications specialist for AARP Washington.
Washington’s sturdy, tanklike ballot drop boxes are a source of pride for state and local election officials. So when President Donald Trump suggested in August that ballot boxes are less than secure, the response here was sharp.
“Some states use ‘drop boxes’ for the collection of Universal Mail-In Ballots,†Trump tweeted. “So who is going to ‘collect’ the Ballots, and what might be done to them prior to tabulation? A Rigged Election? So bad for our Country. Only Absentee Ballots acceptable!â€
Washington has laws to prevent that. And the state, which has been all-vote-by-mail since 2011, has a decade of experience with ballot boxes that counters the president’s claims.
Washington’s top elections official, Secretary of State Kim Wyman, said she knows of no incidents where ballot drop boxes have been tampered with or the ballots inside altered.
“Washington’s experience is that they are very secure,†Wyman said. “We haven’t had any issues with lost ballots or fraud — and our voters love them. I don’t share the president’s concerns about ballot drop box fraud.â€
Nationwide, the focus on ballot drop boxes has increased amid fears that cost-cutting measures at the U.S. Postal Service could hamper mail-in voting. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced a lawsuit challenging recent postal service operational changes that he said could undermine the November election. U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he would pause some mail-system changes until after the election.
The issue has taken on greater importance this year, as more states shift to voting by mail during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Washington, more than half of voters in the Aug. 4 primary election used drop boxes to return their ballots, according to Wyman. There are about 450 boxes statewide.
State law requires two people to be present any time ballot boxes are emptied, to ensure there are witnesses to the process. They must log the date and time they remove ballots, along with their names, so there is a record of who handled the ballots should anything be amiss.
Five county election officials said they use only trained county election employees to transport ballots. Those people have to sign an oath that they will uphold the integrity of the election process.
“The people who are doing this are sworn election workers — they take an oath before every election to perform their duties and comply with the law,†said Mason County Auditor Paddy McGuire. “These aren’t just people we pick up off the street. Most  have been doing this for years and years in our office. They are people we trust.â€
Multiple levels of security
Every time a ballot drop box is unlocked and emptied, a tamper-evident seal is placed on the access door. That means that when election workers return to the ballot box, they will be able to see if someone opened it and accessed the ballots without permission. All seals are numbered and the seals’ serial numbers are logged by election workers.
Ballots are then moved from the drop box to the counting facility in another secure container, which also is closed using a numeric seal.
Once the secure container of ballots reaches the tabulation center, the number on the seal is checked against the paperwork that was filled out when the box was emptied. State law requires that a second copy of the paperwork be kept inside the container, for added verification.
Some counties have gone to additional lengths to ensure they can track the process of emptying ballot boxes. Pierce County, the state’s second-most populous, issues county-owned phones to election workers and tracks them via a GPS system as they travel between ballot boxes. That way, the county knows if an election worker takes a detour or goes anywhere else with the ballots.
“They are given very clear driving directions, and they can’t deviate†from that route, said Julie Anderson, Pierce County auditor since 2009. She said that means even if someone made an unauthorized stop to use a restroom, county officials would know.
The same electronic system in Pierce County lets election workers upload information about dropoffs and pickups in real time, so that the auditor’s office can monitor the status of drop boxes remotely, Anderson said.
During ballot pickups, Pierce County election workers take photos of the empty ballot boxes and upload them as proof that all ballots were removed and none were left behind. King County election workers follow a similar procedure.
Julie Wise, King County’s elections director, said the state’s systems for tracking ballots also ensure that fraudulent ballots can’t be fabricated and stuffed in drop boxes to sway an election.
Each ballot envelope has a unique identifier associated with each voter, which ensures that elections officials only count one ballot per person — even if someone were to put multiple ballots in a drop box, or try to flood a drop box with fake ballots, Wise said. That’s even the case with the online ballots that King County voters can fill out and print at home, she added.
“You can’t have foreign interference, people printing off envelopes and sending them in,†Wise said. “That’s not how it works.â€
Meddling with ballots to achieve a political end would also be difficult, since it’s impossible to tell how a person voted from the outside of a ballot envelope, said Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall.
Yakima County Auditor Charles Ross said citizens can learn election procedures and observe the process of opening ballot boxes to ensure everything is done properly.
“Any person can witness, go with us, meet us at a location,†Ross said. “We crave observation, we love when people come observe.â€
Anderson said trained observers from the political parties are often present when drop boxes are emptied in Pierce County, “to make sure nothing is happening.â€
Ballot boxes vary in size and weight, but many are several hundred pounds, even 1,000 pounds. They’re also typically bolted into the ground, so they can’t just be hauled away.
Even things that seem like they would compromise a ballot box often don’t. A Thurston County ballot box wasn’t significantly damaged last year when it was hit by an SUV. And in King County, a school bus failed to destroy a ballot box in a collision a few years back, Wise said.
“The box was fine,†Wise said. “The school bus, not so much.â€
Source: Crosscut.com, a non-profit news site based in Seattle. Melissa Santos wrote this article.
ABOUT VOTING AND BALLOT BOXES
County election departments will mail ballots to voters on Oct. 16.
Ballots must be placed in a drop box no later than 8 p.m. on election night (Nov. 3). Mailed ballots must be postmarked no later than Nov. 3.
Locations of ballot drop boxes In Pierce County and King County are listed on the counties’ respective websites and in county-issued voters’ guides. The same is true of other counties.
State law requires county election officials to make sure ballot boxes aren’t overflowing. Most counties do regular pickups throughout the 18-day voting period leading up to the end of the election (Nov. 3 for this year’s general election). In King County, ballots a
Drop boxes like this one in Pierce County are a key part of how voters statewide cast their ballots.
re retrieved from drop boxes daily, with additional pickups on Election Day and the day before. In Pierce County, pickups generally occur every 48 hours, then more often in the final two days of voting.
All summer, I enjoy cherries and peaches—the luscious summer fruits, which dribble juice on our chins, necks and fingertips. Peaches and cherries are pricey, even when they’re in season—costing more than apples or even the lovely clementines that we get in winter. I treat myself to lots of cherries and peaches. Because I’m old.
Actually, I don’t think of myself as really old. I’m always a little surprised when I look in the mirror and see my gray hair and crinkled face or when someone refers to me as old. I hate when my doctor reminds me, “’At your age, this complaint [with eyes, joint, skin, heart, etc.] is normal and to be expected.” But I didn’t expect to have this problem! It doesn’t seem normal to me if my joints are worn or my eyes get spots.
Like my old car, my body parts seem to be rusting and wearing out from too much use. Sometimes it’s my knees. Or my neck. Or my shoulder.
Not long ago, it was my knees—if I sat too long or walked too much, my knees throbbed. The nurse said ice packs and ibuprofen. Okay, the knees are better now. Is this just part of the process—the breakdown of movable parts?
And, of course, I forget words. I especially forget proper nouns, like names. Walking on a path by the lake one morning, I meet two sets of friends. I would like to introduce these friends to each other. But I can’t remember their names. It’s as if their names are floating in the blue air around me but I can’t retrieve them—at least not at that moment. I stand by feeling foolish as my friends introduce themselves.
These friends seem to understand and tolerate my forgetting problem. They’re about my age.
As we grow older, we have a different perspective on life. A gerontologist put it this way: At a certain age, we start counting years, not so much in chronological age, but in how many more years we might live. Of course, the number of our years is a mystery. But what old people know is that our time is finite.
Theoretically, young people know this too. But when we’re young, time seems like it will go on forever. We dream about what we might be and what we might accomplish, and anything and everything seems possible. We jog on hard surfaces, play tennis or football, and use our fingers, elbows and knees as if they would never rust.
When we’re old, we understand finiteness in a visceral way. We’ve loved and lost. We’ve had our share of successes and failures. Various of our body parts have broken down.
What old people understand is the passage of time. We’ve seen how babies grow into middle-aged and how accidents or sickness can come with no warning—or how good things can happen, too. History is something we’ve experienced. We’ve seen men walking on the moon, lived through the Vietnam War, and watched the fall of the Berlin Wall. The current pandemic is yet one more major historical event in our lives.
I used to teach classes on the sociology of aging to college students, most of whom were 19-year-olds. For them, aging was something that happened to their grandparents—it wasn’t real for them. They could learn the facts, the statistics and the theories. But old age was like a far-off planet they never planned to visit.
I’ve been lucky, extraordinarily lucky. I’ve had a wonderful life. I’m grateful. And, now in my mid-70s, I still have dreams and work to do: Books I’m writing, art I’m creating, places I want to go. So I’m not preparing my epilogue—not quite yet.
But somewhere there’s a stopwatch with my name on it. My number of summers is finite. So, I’m going to eat peaches and cherries in the summer—lots of peaches and cherries.
Lucy Rose Fischer, who wrote this article, is an author, artist and social scientist. Her books include “I’m New at Being Old†(Temuna Press, 2010), “Grow Old With Me†(Temuna Press, 2019), and “The Journalist†(Spark Press, 2020). She can be reached at www.lucyrosedesigns.com.
