Missoula Voter Absentee Ballot Participation Currently Lagging Behind Many Counties
A special election is underway in Montana right now and elections coordinators across the state are hoping to see high participation from the public. Missoula County Elections Coordinator Rebecca Connors says she’s happy with the participation rate so far in Missoula, but says we are lagging behind many other counties.
"For absentees so far, we are at 61 percent," Connors said. "We received a little over 30,000 back and we have issued over 49,000, however, we are not beating other counties for turnout: Flathead, Yellowstone and Lewis and Clark County are all reporting turnout of 65 percent or higher."
Connors hopes that more Missoulians turn out to vote in the last two days of the election.
"We are expecting maybe voter turnout within the absentees upwards of 70 percent or so, we always see high voter turnout within that population of absentees, but when it comes to the polling places, we're not sure if we will see somewhere between 5,000 or 8,000 voters on Election Day, because that's what has turned out in the past for non-presidential general elections."
One bright spot for Election coordinators during this special election is a one page ballot. Connors says she expects quicker results than the two page ballot in 2017, which she says doubled or tripled the processing time.