Cache County Clerk: More and more votes may be cast through the mail

Cities themselves will be taking care of elections where mayors and city council members are chosen this year but the Cache County Clerk’s Office will also have a lot to do. That’s because both the Logan and Cache County School Districts will be having school building bond elections on the November ballot.

County Clerk Jill Zollinger says getting those ballots out is her responsibility.

Three cities will not be holding elections because the incumbent candidates had no opposition. Zollinger says her office will get those and school board ballots out by mail.

“We thought that was probably a better way to do it so it doesn’t confuse the voters and helps the election workers on election day,” Zollinger says. “Then they don’t have to worry about who’s inside the city and who’s outside.

“We’ll be mailing to those who live outside of a city and then those three–Mendon, Cornish and Paradise–will be mailed ballots for the bond election.”

Final municipal and school bond elections are scheduled for Tuesday, November 5.

Zollinger also says more and more ballots may be mailed in the future. Electronic voting machines are on the way out according to a headline in the Salt Lake Tribune on Monday. The story said the manufacturer is no longer building them, the parts will get scarce and the technology will become obsolete.

Zollinger says the electronic machines have worked fine in Utah mostly because all of the counties have worked together. She agreed, however, that they will probably only be around for a few years.

“There’s no manufacturers out there that are building new electronic voting machines. What is out there is basically old machines. There aren’t any new ones out there and the state is looking at another type of voting. It might be a paper ballot.”

Zollinger says if a change is made to the paper ballot, voting by mail would be the best way to go because the ballots can be tallied by optical scanners.

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