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Friday, October 31, 2008
Ind. Law - No satellite voting in Allen County
Niki Kelly of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a long story today that reports:
INDIANAPOLIS – Voters in Lake, Marion, St. Joseph, Monroe and other Indiana counties have been voting early at convenient satellite locations in recent weeks.But not voters in Allen County, the largest county geographically in the state.
Allen County voters wanting to cast early ballots have only one location choice – the City-County Building on Main Street.
Members of the Allen County Election Board say adding satellite sites was discussed but the logistics couldn’t be worked out in time.
“We don’t like large mistakes,” Democratic member Andy Downs said. “We wanted to be certain we could do it and do it right.”
In Indiana, eligible voters can cast an early absentee ballot in person with a photo ID without having to give a reason. In addition, traditional mail-in absentee ballots are available for those who are ill, can’t travel or might be out of town.
As of Thursday morning, 409,000 Hoosiers have submitted absentee ballots, which won’t be counted until Election Day. Of that number, about 302,000 are in-person, early absentee votes, the secretary of state’s office confirmed.
“It’s very popular, just exploding,” said Pam Finlayson, director of the Allen County Election Board, who estimated Allen County averages 1,000 early voters a day.
One of the reasons early voting is attractive is that Hoosiers can avoid long lines expected at the polls on Election Day on Tuesday. But those voting early have faced lines of their own.
Some counties, such as Hamilton and Marion in central Indiana, have reported that voters have had to wait several hours to cast ballots.
Finlayson said Allen County is lucky to have the large lobby of the City-County Building to hold the lines of people wanting to vote early and that the lines generally moved quickly.
“But Allen County will have regional absentee sites in the future. There is a need. The volume has outgrown the facility,” she said, noting the election board had originally thought it would try satellite voting in the primary with its new voting machines.
“But then everything became so historic that we decided it was not a good year to launch an entirely new process,” Finlayson said.
All counties can have satellite early-voting sites with unanimous approval of the election board.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 31, 2008 09:39 AM
Posted to Indiana Law