Franklin County voters will have an opportunity to cast ballots Saturday for the June 9 primary. The special day of Saturday voting – to be held from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Franklin County Board of Elections and Registration at 7850 Royston Road in Carnesville – will be the latest opportunity to vote early in the election.
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Franklin County Elections Supervisor Gina Kesler demonstrates the state's new voting machine. Early voting is now open, and a special day of early voting will be held Saturday at the elections office in Carnesville.
CARNESVILLE – Franklin County voters will have an opportunity to cast ballots Saturday for the June 9 primary.
The special day of Saturday voting – to be held from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Franklin County Board of Elections and Registration at 7850 Royston Road in Carnesville – will be the latest opportunity to vote early in the election.
Plenty of voters have already done so.
Elections Supervisor Gina Kesler said Tuesday that 2,257 people have already voted by mail for the June 9 election.
All Franklin County voters received an absentee ballot application in the mail as part of a state-wide effort to encourage vote-by-mail due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Kesler said that in addition to the 2,257 ballots that have been returned, another 1,808 have been sent out to voters and applications are still coming in.
All of the absentee ballots must be returned by June 9 at 7 p.m. to be counted in the election.
Ballots may also be dropped off in a drop box at the elections office.
Voters may continue to request absentees until June 5, Kesler said, but she encouraged voters to do so earlier to account for the time it takes to mail the ballots and get them back in by June 9.
Due to the number of mailed-in ballots, the elections office will begin processing the ballots June 2 and will continue until June 9, when they will be tabulated beginning at noon.
“That’s a lot of ballots to get opened,” Kesler said.
Early in-person voting began last week at the elections office.
As of Tuesday, 314 people had voted early.
Together with the mailed absentees, about 2,500 voters had already voted in the primary.
In the same primary in 2016, about 3,200 people total voted.
That number is still well below the general elections from 2016 and 2018, when more than 8,000 people voted in Franklin County.
There are currently 15,100 registered voters in the county.
Early voting will continue through June 5.
Kesler said about 100 early voters had previously received an absentee ballot.
Anyone who has received an absentee but who chooses to vote in-person as well must return the ballot to the elections office, Kesler said.