The Jackson County Board of Elections hosted its Absentee Meeting on Nov. 2 ahead of Election Day. During this meeting, the board reviewed mail-in absentee ballots, vote on whether to accept the ballots or not, and then to approve them for tabulation.
The director for the Jackson County BOE, Amanda Allen, said that everything has been good so far with all the absentee votes received.
“So far, so good! We’ve had really good returns on absentees, so we had a bunch that we processed today, which was really exciting,” Allen said. “That means that people are getting them in on time, they’re getting them here, and they’re getting approved.”
If an absentee ballot gets approved, it is systematically scanned and prepared under strict supervision to keep it moving accurately ahead of final results. If an absentee ballot gets denied, the BOE is required to notify the voter immediately, and then the voter may be able to correct the problem. However, if the problem is not corrected and they cannot successfully cast their absentee ballot, they may still vote in person on Election Day.
The board started to review the mail in ballots in late September. The board will have one more meeting to review them during election day. For the absentee vote of a Jackson county resident to be counted it needs to arrive at the BOE by closing of the polls at 7:30 on Nov. 3. So far the county has received 299 mail in votes.
