Voting in the age of coronavirus: Idaho does the right thing with this latest move
Over the past week, since I wrote a column about the upcoming May 19 primary, I’ve been getting calls from readers who don’t have a computer and have been concerned about being able to vote in the election.
Kudos to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office for its decision to send an absentee ballot request form to every registered voter in Idaho by mail. Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney made the announcement Wednesday.
“We will be sending an absentee ballot request to every registered voter that has not already requested a ballot for May,” he said. “So if you can’t access idahovotes.gov, you don’t need to worry; we will be sending you a request form to your registered address in the next 10 to 14 days.”
This should allay the fears of many people who either do not have a computer or internet access, or who simply felt uncomfortable trying to navigate the website to request an absentee ballot, especially since Gov. Brad Little announced that voting would be done strictly by absentee ballot because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Sending out an absentee ballot request form to every registered voter is really the best thing the Secretary of State’s Office could have done. As I wrote last week, sending out a ballot to every possible voter is not practical because the political parties have different rules for their primaries. The Republican Party allows only registered Republicans to vote in its primary, while the Democratic Party allows registered Democrats, as well as unaffiliated voters and members of other political parties — even the Republican Party.
Further, there’s a nonpartisan ballot that includes just nonpartisan elections, such as those for judges and bond and levy measures.
In other words, you can’t send just the same ballot to every voter in Idaho. Each voter gets a ballot based on which party’s primary he or she is voting in. Plus, voters get different ballots based on which taxing districts they live in. For example, voters who live in the West Ada School District will get a ballot with a $69 million bond measure on it.
Chad Houck, chief deputy with the Secretary of State’s Office, also pointed out to me that interest in primary voting is traditionally low and turnout is much lower, typically in the 15% range, so sending out a ballot to every adult just doesn’t make sense.
I went back and looked.
In the May 2016 primary election, a total of 176,806 people voted, just 23% of registered voters and 14% of the voting age population.
So while there were 1.2 million eligible voters and 770,000 registered voters, only 176,806 people voted.
Of the people who voted, 24,890 voted by absentee ballot and early voting, for a rate of 14.1% voting absentee or early. In Ada County, the percentage of voters voting early or absentee was a little lower, at 12.9%.
If you don’t want to wait for a request form in the mail, you can still request one online.
This also comes right on the heels of the Secretary of State’s Office making it easier to request an absentee ballot directly online, rather than having to download a form, print it out and mail it in.
Go to idahovotes.gov, where you’ll be asked for the number on your state-issued ID (driver’s license) and the last four digits of your Social Security number to validate your absentee ballot request with your voter registration.
Wait. It may take 10-14 days to receive your absentee ballot in the mail.
It may take 10-14 days to receive the ballot you’ve requested. After that, voters will be able to turn in ballots right away or right on up to May 19. I was also glad to hear that, because I’m a little bit of a believer in the sanctity of Election Day. I don’t like voting early, and then something happens before Election Day that might have changed my mind (Google “Greg Gianforte reporter assault”).
You can also still download and mail in your request to your county clerk’s office.
I had speculated that perhaps Idaho Gov. Brad Little might delay the primary election, and Denney’s office requested a delay. Little, however, pushed forward with the May 19 date.
In a sense, though, the election is kind of delayed.
The deadline to register to vote, the deadline for county clerks to receive a request for absentee
ballot by mail or by in-person delivery and the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot online is all 8 p.m. on May 19.
The deadline for absentee ballots to be received by the county clerks is not until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 2.
So, in a sense, June 2 is kind of the real Election Day.
Results for the primary election will be posted no earlier than 9 p.m. on June 2.
And that will be fine. Waiting two weeks longer for results is a tiny price to pay to carry out an important election in the safest way possible.
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 10:21 AM.
