Monroe County early in-person voting starts Tuesday, absentee ballot pace ahead of 2022

Early voting for the Nov. 3 general election starts next Tuesday (Oct. 6) in Monroe County, with absentee voting so far running ahead of the pace from the last midterm election in 2022.

That was the update from election supervisor Kylie Farris to the Monroe County election board at its regular Thursday (Oct. 1) meeting. Farris reported that 1,348 absentee ballots had been issued and 265 had already been returned. The election office had also received 36 requests for the travel board, which starts making visits Oct. 15.

A traveling board is a bipartisan team of election workers that brings an absentee ballot to voters who cannot make it to a polling place, because of illness, injury or disability. The deadline to apply for a mail-in absentee ballot is Oct. 22. 

At the same point in the election cycle in 2022, the county election division had issued 1,271 absentee ballots, received 154 back and had received no traveling-board requests, Farris said.    

That means this year’s voting (265 versus 154) is easily outpacing the 2022 rate. But there’s still a long way to go until Nov. 3. In 2022 a total of around 40,000 voters cast ballots in Monroe County.

Farris reported the current count of registered voters in Monroe County as 90,456, which a figure that comes from adding 76,238 active to 14,218 inactive voters. 

She also told the board that the county’s legal notice for the general election had been sent for publication Monday, well ahead of the Oct. 18 deadline. 

The deadline to register or update a registration for the Nov. 3 general election is Monday, Oct. 5. That’s a day ahead of the start of in-person early voting on Oct. 6.

Voters who want an absentee ballot mailed to them have until 11:59 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, to get their application to election officials. Absentee ballots can be requested through Indiana’s online voter portal.   

Davis loses “sore loser” court challenge

In other election related news, Monroe County circuit court judge Kara Krothe rejected Joe Davis’s challenge to the state’s so-called “sore loser” law, leaving in place the election board’s decision that Davis cannot pursue the county clerk’s office in the general election after losing the Democratic primary for the same office.

Davis finished third in the May Democratic primary and later filed to run as an independent write-in candidate. The election board voted 3–0 in August to disqualify that candidacy under Indiana Code 3-8-1-5.5, which bars a person defeated in a primary from becoming a candidate for the same office in the general election later that same year. 

Davis challenged the law on federal and state constitutional grounds. In her Sept. 25 order, ​​Krothe concluded that Indiana’s restriction is constitutional and denied Davis’s petition for judicial review.

Early Voting Schedule

Early in-person voting takes place in the North Showers Building on Morton Street.