Early voting starts in South Dakota on Friday! This Friday!
Technically, we open absentee voting Friday, September 23, and any registered voter can go to the courthouse (or one of seven satellite early voting centers in certain counties with large tribal populations living away from the county seat) and cast an absentee ballot in person, without having to assert that they will actually be absent on Election Day.
Now you may not want to vote early, given that there are ten ballot measures to study and mark correctly. But the profusion of ballot questions is also a good reason to study early and perhaps avoid the Election Day rush… or should I say Election Day crawl?
Inevitably on Election Day, there will be some folks who may be confronting the ballot measures for the first time. They’ll take their time reading. State law says South Dakota voters can spend no more than ten minutes in the voting booth, but if a significant percentage of voters take that full time, you could be waiting longer than you expected for a booth.
So help your neighbors out: study the ballot measures now, make a handy crib sheet to bring to the polls… and consider voting early to ease the Election Day delays.
I’ve been to the county auditor’s office twice to get sample ballots. No luck. Do they have them yet? (Helps to have a cheat-sheet when there are ten of them!)
Robin! SOS Krebs said earlier this month that sample ballots won’t come out until absentee ballots are available, which is this week Friday, September 23. Get yours Friday, and study hard!