Early voting turnout has county considering additional days
High early voter turnout has the Dubois County Election Board considering increasing the number of voting sites and machines leading up to election day.
According to County Clerk Bridgette Jarboe, 1082 votes have been cast since voting started last Wednesday. She told the election board they averaged about 50 voters daily during the 2014 midterm election and weren’t even this busy during the 2016 Presidential election.
“Yesterday, 305 people went through,” County Clerk Bridgette Jarboe said Tuesday.
She explained that voters coming to the County Annex to vote around mid-morning might have to wait in line. “We get a longer line around 10:30,” she told the board.
She explained the average wait has been about three minutes for voters to cast their ballot.
The election board could add machines to handle the turnout however, this will mean less machines are available for election day. Machines used during the early election cannot be used election day. The county has 96 machines in total, four of which are reserved if there are issues with one of the other active machines.
Rather than add machines, the election board is considering opening up voting at the 35th Street Fire Station in Jasper a week early and adding another Saturday to the schedule at the Dubois County Courthouse Annex.
Jarboe plans on checking to see if the fire station is available. Dubois County Democratic Chair Joe Huddleston and Dubois County Republican Chair Mark Messmer said they will seek volunteers to operated the site for those additional days as well as the additional Saturday at the Annex.
If things fall in place, the fire station could open up next week from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m and the annex would be open an additional Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The early voting locations with current schedule can be viewed at the link below.
Curious what the reasons are that the machines used for early voting can’t be used again for regular election day voting…is it something to do with (re-)programming to include limits for each machine to a single date/time/location, or maybe recounts if needed, or?
The machines maintain a count of the number of votes cast on each machine and once the early voting is completed, they are locked up until the count can be conducted at 6 p.m. on Election Day. According to the clerk, the counts are monitored very closely during the early voting by volunteers from both parties. Votes are stored on the machines until the time the election board downloads the results.