Nearly 300 absentee ballots unaccounted for

Clerk's office open briefly on Monday

By KEITH KINNAIRD

News editor

SANDPOINT - Extra precautions are being taken to make sure absentee ballots are received in time to be counted in Tuesday's primary election.

The Bonner County Clerk's office will be open for three hours on Monday even though it's Memorial Day. The clerk's office, located on the first floor of the courthouse, will be open from 9 a.m. to noon.

Clerk Marie Scott has also made arrangements so elections officials can pick up ballots at the post office on Saturday and Monday.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure people's votes will count,” Scott said.

Scott strongly recommends people with absentee ballots get them in the mail by today at the latest. But the surefire way of making sure your absentee ballot arrives in time is to deliver it by hand at the courthouse on Monday or Tuesday.

“They have to reach us by the close of polls at 8 p.m. on Tuesday,” she said.

Absentee ballots cannot be turned in at voting precincts. Precinct workers cannot accept them and they will direct absentee voters to the courthouse, the only place where their ballots are accepted.

Slightly more than 1,000 absentee ballots have been distributed for the primary, but 285 of them are still missing in action, Scott said. Ballots received after the polls close will not be counted.

“Every election cycle we have about 50 ballots that arrive the day after election and those are not counted,” said Scott.

The voting record for absentee voters in a primary was set in 2004, when 1,248 citizens voted absentee. Nearly 3,000 people voted absentee in that cycle's general election.

Absentee voting was less popular during the 2006 primary, when only 548 people voted absentee.

“We didn't break a record,” Scott said of this primary's absentee participation. “But it's a lot better than our last primary.”