by Steve White, NTV News
Without enough poll workers, some counties are “mailing it in” this election. Voting by mail is a way to save money and increase turnout, officials say.
While most Nebraskans who vote will do so on Election Day, some like Curtis Glass of Central City have already cast their ballot.
“They make it incredibly easy to vote early, or let you know where to go,” he said.
Around 2,000 ballots in Merrick County will be cast at kitchen tables, and hundreds more at the courthouse, like Glass did.
Several rural areas of the county have only one option – vote by mail.
County Clerk Marcia Wichmann said, “It’s worked out great. We’ve had better voter turnout, cost-wise it saves the county some money, and we don’t have the problem of looking for as many poll workers as what we had.”
Wichmann said she eliminated 10 of 15 precincts. One issue she had was finding workers who could attend mandatory training, and then work on Election Day.
She said, “It’s a very long day, starts at 7 a.m. in the morning until 8 at night and past that by the time they have everything gathered up.”
They pay minimum wage plus pay mileage for those who live out of town.
Wichmann says voting by mail has been cheaper, even with the added expense of postage.
Plus she says turnout is greater in a county where many commute and voting may be more inconvenient.
“So by the time they get off work and drive back, there’s a lot of people who just want to go home, or once they get home don’t want to go back out again,” she said.
The ballots are locked away until Election Day and the election commissioner says signatures allow them to verify that the ballots were filled out by the right person.
The non-partisan Project Vote finds strong approval for voting by mail, but the group says results are mixed when looking at cost and turnout.
Project Vote cautions there are drawbacks, like ballots getting lost in the mail.
As for Curtis, he’s worried his ballot would get lost in the shuffle.
“I’m not the best at my filing and taking care of that stuff, so I think coming here and doing it early… I don’t know about the mail,” he said.
As for voter fraud, studies show there’s little evidence of a problem with voting by mail.