More Places Open For Voters Casting Absentee Ballots Kootenai County Clerk Doesn’T Want Any Excuses For Not Voting

Dan English would like to hear your excuse for not voting.

Since he took office in 1995, Kootenai County’s clerk has racked his brain for ways to make voting more accessible and convenient.

He has expanded voting time, adding an hour in the morning, before many voters have to report to work. He’s added precincts - 12 since 1996 - bringing voting closer to people and reducing the wait by splitting crowded polling places into two. And he’s created an extensive Internet site, giving voters information about polling places and times.

“I really hate to operate on a shame factor,” said English, “but after all of that, what would be the excuse?”

Now English is expanding the number of places where voters can cast absentee ballots.

English, himself up for re-election in November, held a news conference Monday to announce that the city halls of Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum, Athol and Harrison will offer absentee polling for the first time this year. Until this year the county has had only absentee voting office, at 315 W. Garden.

English came up with the idea to expand absentee balloting in 1996, when city residents voted on an initiative to ban hydroplane racing on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Absentee voting was offered at Coeur d’Alene City Hall and was so popular that English looked for ways to expand it.

He ran straight into a state law that prohibited counties from having more than one absentee polling place. So he wrote a new law changing that, and, with help from the Idaho Association of Counties, lobbied the Legislature to pass it.

Voters also have the choice of mailing in absentee ballots.

English said he’s eager to offer more options to voters, especially after the county’s dismal 16 percent voter turnout during the May primary. “We were dead last (statewide),” English said.

Also new this year are table-top voting booths. Voters sit at tables, inside a three-sided partition, to fill out ballots. The table-top structures only cost $40, compared to voting booths at $300 apiece. They’re also easier to transport and take up less storage room, said Deedie Beard, elections supervisor.

“The stand-up (voting booths), we had to have a building to store those in,” Beard said. “If we have any of the stand-up ones, it’ll only be one at each precinct.”

Elections officials also are making an extra effort to distribute sample ballots. This year’s ballot is dense and includes extensive constitutional amendments that take a long time to read. Voters would speed the process, elections officials said, by picking up a sample ballot and educating themselves on the issues before heading to the polls. Sample ballots are available at county libraries, absentee polling places and in the county elections office.

“We’ve never pushed the sample ballots as hard as we have this year because there’s so much in it that we have to get that out to the public,” Beard said.

ABSENTEE VOTING The city halls of Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum, Athol and Harrison will offer absentee polling for the first time this year.