'For a midterm, this is huge'

Sawyer’s Rick Klevorn voted absentee in the second-floor hallway of the Carlton County Courthouse Tuesday, as he has done so many times before.

“I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it,” said Klevorn, adding that he’s been absentee-voting for at least 10 years. “It’s just easy.”

Klevorn may be a trendsetter, but the general population in Carlton County is now catching up to him.

County Auditor Paul Gassert said the number of absentee ballots cast in the county is at its highest point ever, and there was still almost a week until the election. Out of 20,000 registered voters in the county, his office had mailed or handed out 4,400 absentee ballots by noon Tuesday, and accepted 2,541 completed ballots. He was estimating the total number of absentee ballots would reach at least 5,000 by Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

Senior Deputy Auditor Sally Menze said there’s been a steady stream of voters since absentee voting opened up on Sept. 21.

“We even had people coming in before that,” she said. “It was busy for the presidential election, but for a midterm, this is huge.”

The county went from approximately 2,500 absentee ballots in 2014 to 3,500 in 2016, to possibly 5,000 this year if Gassert’s predictions hold true. Before the legislature passed “no excuse voting” — whereby voters don’t have to give a reason for voting in advance — those numbers were closer to 1,000-1,500, Gassert said.

“There’s a lot of interest in this election,” added coworker Joyce Christian, who was carrying a large pile of absentee ballots in their white envelopes to a room already holding stacks of ballots waiting to be run through the voting machine after 8 p.m. Nov. 6.

On the opposite side of the voting booth from Klevorn Tuesday afternoon stood Cloquet’s Billie Halverson, absentee-voting for the first time ever. A nurse, Halverson wasn’t sure if she would have to work on Tuesday, so she wanted to make sure she got to vote.

She will probably do it again.

“It was pretty much painless,” she said.

Gassert said the county isn’t alone in the increased interest. It’s everywhere, he said.

“I’m not convinced that the local races are having an impact now, although it did have an impact in Cloquet for the primary election,” the auditor said. “But that was the only area that had hotly contested races [for the primary],” he added.

The County Auditor’s office will accept absentee ballots through 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5. The office — on the second floor of the courthouse at 301 Walnut Avenue in Carlton — will also be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3 for absentee voting. Residents who live in places where voting is done by mail, such as the city of Barnum, can mail in ballots or, if they’ve left it for too late, come in and vote at the courthouse, Gassert said.

“The number of ballots we’re getting by mail has finally started to level off,” he said.

If a voter is already registered in Minnesota, there is no requirement for a driver’s license or photo ID at the polls on Election Day or at the polls outside his office in advance of Nov. 6.

Gassert held out a small drive, explaining how each voting machine is separate from the others.

“This is the brains of the operation right here,” he said, explaining that the machines are not connected to the internet at the polls or in his office. To upload the voting numbers, Gassert has to remove the drive and load each one individually.

“People can’t hack into our system,” he said.

To foil any plans for programming the machines to misread the ballots in any way, the Auditor’s office has also been conducting public tests of the voting equipment all week.

Should there be an issue with the numbers, there are paper ballots that can be counted.

In the meantime, residents keep coming through the side doors at the County Courthouse, heading to the Auditor’s office upstairs.

Gassert and his team of workers don’t expect that to slow down anytime soon.

“It’s always busier the last week before the election,” said Gassert. “People realize the election is sneaking up … and deer season starts Saturday.”