Election bureau prepares for Nov. 8
The heat is on at Butler County’s Bureau of Elections, as employees tirelessly prepare for the general election Nov. 8, according to county solicitor Wil White.
Preparations start earlier than one would think, White said, with the bureau pondering this next election since June.
“On average you spend about a full month after an election doing things from the preceding election; internal audits, clean up, recounts,” he said. “I’d say we started on this election six weeks to two months after the preceding election.”
The end of October seems to be the busiest time for his staff, which includes a director, assistant director, poll coordinator, four registrars and two part-time employees.
“We’re staffed better than we’ve ever been, and it allows for people to be tasked with certain things so they can become good at it,” he said. “We start (preparing) by looking at mailing lists, trying to clean them up.”
Staying up-to-date on voter lists proves to be a challenge in itself.
“We’re always keeping voter roles current. It’s hard because it’s constant, like painting a room: you go back and and find a streak. It’s never done,” White said. “There’s no way you can have a perfect voter list, you just keep working on it every day.”
Residents calling the office about changes to voter registrations often takes the most time, according to White. A close second is preparing ballots, sending absentee or mail-in ballots, and ordering supplies.
“At the polling place, you have to have ballots for every voter in the precinct,” White said. “We’re ordering materials, especially with supply chains being what they are, like envelopes, as early as possible since mail-ins take three envelopes and we need the paper we print ballots and instruction sheets on.”
Mailing ballots are sent in a particular order, White said. Residents on the permanent mailing list are sent first, then those who requested to be a mail-in voter for that election.
“We sort of process them in the order for receiving them,” he said.
White said he expects the next two weeks to pick up significant speed, as polling place materials are delivered.
“Getting equipment out to polling places and getting them signage, tables and chairs, voting apparatuses, takes a whole two days,” he said.
On Nov. 8, the bureau employees will start their day at 5:30 a.m. and end around midnight, if all goes according to plan.
“We start canvasing mail-in ballots by 7 a.m. on election day,” White said. “The concept is that hopefully they’ll be done sooner. Hopefully early in the evening we’ll be done with mail-in and absentee, then we’ll bring in the normal ballots and marry the two. So, by 10:30 p.m. we could be reporting results on the web page. I think that’s a realistic goal to shoot for.”
In the coming days, White said people should remember that a lot of factors play into when mail-in or absentee voters receive their ballots. As of Tuesday, Butler County had 136,764 registered voters, with 17,884 approved absentee/mail-in ballots and more than 1,000 applications.
“I think the biggest thing is to be patient. The whole system is reliable on third parties, one of them being the United Postal Service, people just have to trust the process,” he said. “If by next week you’re still missing ballots, by all means call us.”
White added that residents can come to the Bureau of Elections, 124 West Diamond Street, Floor LL of the Butler County Government Center, and request a mail-in ballot until Nov. 1.
