Thursday, Feb 23, 2012
Election Officials Want to Avoid Wasted Ballots
MURPHYSBORO -- A change in absentee ballot rules could mean more work and higher costs for county clerks this election year.
The law was changed two years ago, to allow anyone to distribute absentee ballot request forms. Local election officials say many groups took advantage of that change to try to encourage more people to vote. Jackson County Clerk Larry Reinhardt believes that also created a lot of confusion and a lot of waste that he's hoping to avoid this time around. He was surprised by the number of absentee ballot requests his office received in November 2010. "They didn't know what to do with the form, didn't know exactly what it meant," he told News Three, "We had people receiving absentee ballots who did not plan to vote absentee." The change in Illinois law allowed campaigns and groups like unions to send the forms to thousands of people; Reinhardt says many people submitted the forms, because they believed it was a new requirement to vote. But that also created problems. "We literally had some voters who walked into the polling places on election day and dropped off their ballot and walked out," he said, "The problem with that is, by state law, an absentee ballot has to be post-marked the day before election day." If the voter can't be tracked down, that can lead to wasted votes, and at the very least, a lot of wasted money. If a voter requests an absentee ballot but shows up in person to vote on election day the absentee ballot must be voided. "An absentee ballot by mail, the processing, the production of the mailing materials can run as high as $7, $8, $9 per ballot," said Reinhardt. Compare that cost to the price tag of voting the old-fashioned way, which Reinhardt puts at between $.50 and a dollar. In the last presidential general election, more than 11 percent of the 25,347 votes cast in Jackson County were absentee. At an average of eight dollars per ballot, it comes to a total of $24,000 dollars. Reinhardt is bracing for a big turnout in both the March primary and especially for the November election. While higher turnout is typical in a presidential year, he says the numbers in Jackson County are typically much above average due to the large population of college students. So officials are encouraging only those who need to vote absentee to do it. "It's still best to show up at the polling pace and cast your vote, or vote early, in-person," remarked Reinhardt. Anyone who can't make it to the polls on election day, also has the option of early voting. Early voting for the primary begins Feb. 27 in Illinois at county clerks' offices. |
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