Doing your absentee ballot ASAP might reduce the strain on election workers

Contributor: John See

As of July 16, over 68,000 State Primary mail ballots have been requested and are in the process of being mailed out to Minneapolis voters!

I’ve been hearing some talk among some senior voters wondering if they should hold off on getting their ballots in soon. (References have been made to cases in the past when extraordinary events caused disruptions in the process, such as the deaths just before election day of Mel Carnahan [MO] in 2000, and Paul Wellstone [MN] in 2002.) Please put your concerns aside. The unprecedented challenges we face now in advancing an efficient and timely election should supersede any hesitation.

By acting now you can make an enormous contribution to the efforts at hand: you will ease the pressure on the many elections workers, who gather together everyday during this pandemic, to receive THOUSANDS of ballot requests, and have to turn around and send out ballots so we can vote. We then send these THOUSANDS of ballots back to the workers, who have to tabulate and record them, come election day.

The numbers they are dealing with are truly staggering. Look at this from Minneapolis Elections:

As of today, over 68,000 State Primary mail ballots have been requested and are in the process of being mailed out to Minneapolis voters! We want YOU to be able to join us in watching these numbers grow. Use the link below to track our daily updates □□https://t.co/JOslFbgk8O pic.twitter.com/HF1AIkFRA9

— Minneapolis Elections & Voter Services (@VoteMpls) July 16, 2020

(That's approximately 2000-3000+ coming in per day.) Such a tremendous initial turnout indicates that Minneapolis voters are highly engaged and will likely be participating at unprecedented levels for this PRIMARY election.

NOTE: The turnaround time is dependent on how the application is returned (online, mailed, dropped off) and which Ward our mail team is processing on that day. Right now, ballots are being mailed anywhere from 2-10 days after the request is received.
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So don’t wait. Be Safe. Be Older and Bolder and VOTE by requesting your ballot ASAP. 

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