PORTLAND, Maine (AP) Absentee ballots continue to flood into clerk’s offices in Maine, and the processing has started.
Clerks normally cannot begin processing absentee ballots until the Friday before Election Day, but an executive order by Gov. Janet Mills allowed local election officials to begin processing the ballots on Tuesday, which is seven days before the election, if they choose to do so.
The goal is to help clerks deal with a flood of absentee ballots.
Clerks are allowed open the envelopes, remove the ballots and check names off the voting list. The actual ballots can be fed into an optical scanning machine with the results stored until the polls close on Election Day.
More than 400,000 already have been cast. They returned their absentee ballots by mail or in person. That breaks Maine’s all-time record of 258,000 absentee ballots cast in the general election in 2016.
Concerns about coronavirus are motivating more voters to use absentee ballots this election cycle. Democrats are utilizing more of the absentee ballots in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S.
