Early Voting Begins Today

By Benjamin Cox on February 23, 2017 at 4:00am

Early voting for the consolidated elections begins today. Residents who would like to cast their ballots before election day on April 4th will need to visit the County Clerks Office to vote.

Morgan County Clerk and Recorder Jill Waggener, explains the process of early voting.

“Early voting does begin tomorrow in my office only. It is regular court house hours 8:30 to 4:30. You’ll just need to come in and state that you would like to early vote. We will print you an application to sign, we will verify your address and print a ballot. You will go across the hall, vote, put your ballot into the election box and you are on your way.”

Waggener explains that if you are unable to make it to the County Clerk’s Office or to the polls, you still have a way to vote.

“If they can’t make it to my office, they can call and request an application be mailed to them, they will sign it and mail it back to my office and we will mail a ballot to that individual. It used to be called absentee voting, they have now changed it to Vote By Mail. So you do have that option if you can’t make it to the polls on election day.”

Waggener says if you haven’t registered to vote yet, that there is still time.

“The close of registration is on March 7th. If you have moved, if you have gotten married and need to change your name you have March 7th to do that. If for some reason you can’t make it in, from March 8th through election day, you can come into my office and we can still register you, but you’ll have to vote at the same time. That is the only stipulation with the grace period.”

The Morgan County Clerk’s Office is located in the Morgan Court House at 300 West State Street. To request a Vote By Mail ballot, call the County Clerk at 1-217-243-8581.