Mail ballots went out a week ago, and the Delta County Courthouse is a-bustle with early voters, heading into election day on November 6th. KVNF’s Marty Durlin has more.
Delta County Clerk Ann Eddins’ office mailed out more than 13,000 ballots last week. By early this week, they’d already received more than 2,000 completed ballots back. Eddins says that Republican registration is up among the county’s 21,000 registered voters.
Approximately 10,000 Republicans, 6000 or so unaffiliated, and 4,220 Democrats or so. And I think this is the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve seen 10,000 registered Republicans.
More than 60 percent of Delta County’s voters have requested a mail-in ballot. Eddins says that pace is ahead of voting four years ago.
In 2010 we had 500 people early voting the entire two weeks. So it averaged out about 50 a day. So we’re ahead of that. We don’t know if it’ll keep up all the way through.
Recently, statehouse democrats have criticized Secretary of State Scott Gessler for overstepping his authority with county clerks. But Eddins says it's the state legislature’s role in elections that she finds cumbersome.
We follow 70-80 pieces of legislation that affect our office every year…so there’s always changes, keeping current on the new laws, and sometimes you don’t particularly like the laws the legislature does.
The last day to request a mail-in ballot be sent to you is Tuesday, October 30. The last day to get a mail-in ballot in person is Friday, November 2. The polls are open from 7 am to 7 pm on Tuesday, November 6, and if you didn’t mail your ballot in, you can deliver it to the courthouse, annex or any polling place before 7 pm. Results will be posted that evening on the county website.
