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CITY, ND – (NewsDakota.com) Earlier this year the Barnes County Commission voted to go with Vote-By-Mail for the Primary Election on June 14th, 2016. This means that the primary means of voting will be by mail, and that only one polling location will be open on Election Day for in-person voting.
Applications will be mailed out to all active voters in Barnes County. Persons who wish to vote may then complete and sign the application, and return it to the Barnes County Auditor’s Office. When the application is received in the Auditor’s Office, receipt of the application will be logged into the Central Voter File, and the appropriate ballot will be mailed to the voter. The voter may then vote their ballot in the privacy of their own home at their leisure. It’s essentially the same as absentee voting, only on a larger scale.
Ballots must be either mailed back (must be post-marked by the day before Election Day, in this case, June 13, 2016, in order to be counted) or they may be hand-delivered to the Auditor’s Office up until close of business on June 13th. If a voter misses those deadlines, they may still vote in person on Election Day at the Barnes County Courthouse.
Barnes County Auditor Beth Didier and Barnes County Commissioner Mike Metcalf talked about these voting changes in Barnes County on our Voice of the Valley program on April 25th with Steve Urness.
Barnes County Auditor Beth Didier says the Central Voter File lists 6,080 people as “active voters.” An active voter is someone who has voted at least once in the last two election cycles (essentially, the last four years.) The 2010 census figures show 8,786 people in Barnes County of voting age.
She says we would expect that there may be a number of Barnes County residents who are not in the Central Voter File who may wish to vote. Anyone who does not receive an application may either request one from the Barnes County Auditor’s Office (701-845-8500), or download the application form from the North Dakota Secretary of State’s website. Here’s the link to the form: http://www.nd.gov/eforms/Doc/sfn51468.pdf
Didier says there will be one polling place open on Election Day from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm in the Barnes County Courthouse for those individuals who need or wish to vote in person on Election Day, or those who miss the mail-ballot return deadlines. If you miss the deadline and still want to vote, please bring the mail ballot with you to the polls and turn it in to the election workers, who will then change your record from a mail-ballot voter to an in-person voter.
She says in order to accommodate possibly larger turnout at the single polling location, there will be a larger than normal election board appointed to handle those duties on Election Day at the Courthouse. There will also be a special election board set up to process the Vote-By-Mail ballots on June 13th & 14th. Election workers will still be required to attend training, as they have in the past.
Dider says over half of the counties in North Dakota have gone to Vote-By-Mail. Most of them have seen increases in voter turnout, and some of them have increased quite dramatically.
In Barnes County, the main reasons for trying Vote-By-Mail have to do with the inaccessibility of some of the polling places and difficulty in recruiting enough well-trained election workers to staff all fifteen precincts across the County. Possible cost savings were also a consideration, but that was not the deciding factor. Didier added, hopefully, we will see an increase in voter turnout by making it easier for people to cast a vote.
For further clarification on the Vote By Mail law see North Dakota Century Code Chapter 16.1-11.1 – Mail Ballot Elections for additional information.