Tiffany Revelle–Record-Bee staff
LAKE COUNTY — Election season is in full swing with absentee voter ballots starting to be mailed out Oct. 10.
Sample ballots were delivered to the post office Thursday with bond package and candidate information.
Of Lake County”s total 65,147 residents, according to a 2005 U.S. Census Bureau estimate, 48 percent are registered to vote.
Absentee voters will carry a lot of the weight come Nov. 7. According to statistics from the county Registrar of Voters office, absentee voters represent approximately 41 percent of Lake County”s 31,248 registered voters.
With one of the most hotly contested supervisorial races in a while, District Three will be in the spotlight this year. District Three has one of the highest return rates in the county for absentee ballots, said county Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley, with a recorded 1,752 absentee ballots returned in the June 6 Primary Election.
Fifty-seven percent of the county”s voters utilized absentee ballots in that election, said Fridley, while 43 percent of the votes were cast at the voting polls.
What this means is a lot of time and energy on the part of the county”s Registrar of Voters office staff in this November”s General Election. Staff in that office began processing absentee ballots for the Nov. 7 General Election in mid-September.
Fridley explained that a majority of absentee ballots are returned by two weeks before the election, but “the largest number (per day) of absentee ballots are returned the day before and the day of the election.”
Twenty-six percent of absentee ballots were returned the day before and the day of the June 6 Primary Election, said Fridley.
“It is helpful if voters return their absentee ballots early,” noted Fridley, but voters may return absentee ballots until the polls close at 8 p.m. Nov. 7.
Absentee voters have not always embodied such a high percentage of voters.
In the November 2002 General Election, only 3,048 county residents were permanent absentee voters. In the upcoming election, the number is 12,333, which constitutes about a 304-percent increase in the past four years.
The reason for the upward trend in absentee voting, according to Fridley, is most likely convenience. Absentee ballots may be returned by mail or by dropping them by any polling location within Lake County.
However, for the other 43 percent, there are the various polling locations throughout the county. And at each one, there is at least one eSlate voting machine.
The machines, designed for voters with disabilities, are required by the “Help America Vote Act” signed by President Bush in 2002.
Included in the choices available at the machines is an option for the visually impaired in which all of the ballot measures are read aloud. District Supervisor One Ed Robey is the voice of the machine.
Once all of the ballots are returned, it only takes a few hours for the sorting machines to tally the votes. Fridley noted that the Registrar of Voters office has 28 days to certify the election, after careful checking and rechecking to make sure all votes are counted.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com
