x
Breaking News
More () »

Smaller counties are dealing with the rush before election day with smaller staff and just as many ballots

"I think we're going to have a good turnout at the polls come Tuesday."

ALEDO, Ill. — In the Mercer County Courthouse you can find one makeshift voting booth upstairs in the hallway.

That one booth has seen a lot of traffic of earlier voters getting their ballots in before election day November 3rd.

Mercer County Clerk Sara Blaser says they’re averaging about 80 voters a day.

It’s a stark difference to counties like Rock Island County that has eight booths and three locations for early voting.

Blaser says the past few weeks have been crazy busy and the county has seen double the amount of early voters it did in 2016.

“Four years ago we had early grace period and vote by mail. We only had 1200 so far right now we've got 2400.”

With the county only having 15,000 people total, and 12,000 eligible voters, it makes Blaser nervous for crowds on election night.

“The primary I had one whole precinct I had to close because I had six out of seven judges call off so I was nervous.”

Luckily Blaser has been able to staff all 20 precincts for Tuesday.

Right now, the court house is the only location for early voting.

On top of that, Blaser is one of only four on her staff working to count the early ballots.

 She says luckily the community has risen to the occasion.

“We've had a lot of people step up and we have enough judges to have all the polling locations open.”

In addition to the already increase of people voting early, there's been at least 15 to 20 people every day this week requesting an absentee ballot.

Those come in the last few days of the county clerk being able to send out absentee ballots.

The deadline for that was October 29th.

The Clerk's Office is trying to have all of the early absentee ballots run through the machine that counts them before next Tuesday.

“I've fed in about 400 so far.”
The rest, locked up waiting to go through the machine.

Blaser hopes by doing so the office can then focus on in person ballots come election night.

“I can at least come up with a preliminary number that night.”

This week, stealing the show, keeping the office busier than they have ever seen in the week leading up to election day.

Before You Leave, Check This Out