I believe in the innate goodness of people. I believe in a civil, participatory society. I believe in voting. But the post office? Not so much.

Ours is a two-voter household in South Deerfield who tried mail-in voting for the primary this year. Our ballots came on Valentine’s Day. The instructions recommended that we send them back a week ahead of the primary to allow plenty of time for the ballot to go through the mail. We filled out our ballots and mailed them back on Feb. 24, 11 days before the primary.

The ballots came with official pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelopes, which indicated they were ballot envelopes. We put our completed ballots in our mailbox, sending them to the town hall several miles away.

On primary day, we checked the secretary of state’s website and found our ballots had not been received by the town clerk. At the end of the day, our ballots had not been counted. We kept monitoring the secretary of state’s website. It showed that our ballots arrived on Wednesday morning, March 6, 12 days after we mailed them and a day late for voting. Of course, our ballots were rejected.

I am glad to have experienced this glitch now. I will not mail my ballot again. I trust the South Deerfield town election process; I trust the Massachusetts secretary of state’s website; I no longer trust that the post office is an honest broker.

If you decide to vote by mail and have questions about your ballot in the future, you may want to track its progress on the secretary of state’s website, www.sec.state.ma.us/WhereDoIVoteMA/TrackMyBallot. On Election Day, if your mail-in ballot hasn’t arrived, you can go to your polling place and vote in person. I hope everyone will vote in this year’s elections, and I believe everybody’s vote should count.

Lucinda Brown

South Deerfield