Voting by mail easy – in Illinois - Woodstock Independent

As the guy who oversees the voting process in McHenry County, Clerk Joe Tirio will tell you he has never voted by mail.

“I get a patriotic shot in the arm when I go [to vote] on Election Day,” he said last week.

Just days earlier, his office had sent out 155,000 vote-my-mail applications to voters throughout the county.

That number, Tirio said, represents a “subset” of the county’s 230,000 registered voters.

Who got an application? As required by a new state law, people who voted in the 2020 primary election, the 2019 municipal election, and the 2018 general election received a letter from the clerk’s office.

On his own initiative, the clerk added people who voted in the 2016 election.

“Some people just vote in a presidential election,” he said.

“Why we send out so many is a recently passed bill that was put together to address concerns about COVID on our election process,” Tirio explained. “It was kind of a hurry-up situation.”

Nov. 3 a holiday

Among other changes, the liberalized election law also allows students 16 and older to be election judges; permits counties to set up a drop box for voters who want to hand-deliver their ballots (McHenry County’s will be at the Administration Building on Ware Road in Woodstock); and creates Nov. 3 as a state holiday this year so that government workers, teachers, and others may take the day off to vote.

Those measures expire Jan. 1.

“It’s only for this election at this point,” said Tirio, who speculated those measures could be extended by the Legislature.

“The issue is,” the clerk said, “will there be [voting] places [where] people will not want to participate in an in-person election.”

COVID-19 has the potential to suppress the vote, Tirio said.

“I think a real problem is brewing for in-person voting in this election,” he said. “I want to make sure people vote. ”

Limitations on gatherings and fears about the coronavirus were not yet concerns during the primary election March 17.

“We were blessed in the primary,” Tirio said. “I don’t think that’s going to be the case in November.”

For voters who send back the application, ballots will be mailed out starting Sept. 24.

The clerk said he advised people to obtain their mail-in ballot as an option for Nov. 3.

If a voter decides to vote early (locally at the Administration Building) or at the polls on Election Day, the voter can surrender that ballot to an election judge and vote then.

Track your mailed ballot

People who choose to mail in their ballots should know it will be counted as long as it is postmarked by Nov. 3. Ballots received for a period after Election Day are included in an official vote total announced by the clerk a couple of weeks after the election.

In an email, Tirio also reported ballot tracking this year will allow voters to follow their mailed ballots as they move “through the mail stream in much the same way they track a package from Amazon.”

Ballot applications are due Oct. 29, five days before the election, so ballots can be mailed before Election Day.

People with questions about their registration status may call the clerk’s office at 815-334-4242.

If 255,00 registered voters seems like a lot in a county of 305,000 residents, it might be because Illinois is slow to purge voters from the system.

Voting records indicate that about 100,000 people who are registered haven’t voted since 2015. That might be because they have moved from the address on their registration but have not been purged from the rolls.

Tirio said his office does what it can to keep names and addresses current on the voter rolls. Address changes come from the U.S. Postal Service, Social Security, and the Illinois Secretary of State’s office (driver’s licenses, auto registrations).

Voters in Illinois get every chance to avoid being purged.

Tirio described a process that starts when his office receives an indication a voter has moved. If a form the clerk’s office sends to that address is returned as undeliverable by the post office, the voter is placed on “inactive” status. After four years, they’re moved to “cancelled,” and then won’t be purged for another four years.

If someone’s voter registration is mistakenly purged, Tirio said, Illinois allows same-day registration at the polls on Election Day. Polls in Illinois are open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“There’s really no reason anybody couldn’t vote in this election,” he said.

And the county is investing in making that happen, Tirio reported. Mailing costs alone for the vote-by-mail applications were nearly $79,000.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"easy" - Google News
August 12, 2020 at 08:53PM
https://ift.tt/3kDEH5R

Voting by mail easy – in Illinois - Woodstock Independent
"easy" - Google News
https://ift.tt/38z63U6
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update

Bagikan Berita Ini