Absentee ballots Q & A

Oneida County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner CarolAnn Cardone answers questions regarding absentee ballots.

This year than during the last presidential election in 2016.

Tonight, news channel two's gary liberatore has more on what happens after you get your absentee ballot.

(gary liberatore, news channel 2) part one : 41:00 - 41:07 if you have requested an absentee ballot...and received one...you can drop it in a mail box... part two : 42:15 - 42:20 take it to the post office...drop it in a slot inside...or even hand it to a postal clerk.... (cover last word above and first couple below with a shot of postofficed deliver directly to the board of elections... or you can even bring it to a polling place either during early voting....or election day...(caa couny deomratic elections commissioner) .

None .

None why would you drop it off at a polling site where you can vote in person, but not vote in person...one reason...maybe you don't want to wait in line.

And...it may be a while before we know who wins this november.

The board of elections cannot open absentees legally until 7 days after the election.

Tc : 09:20 "we have a certified absentee counter so all absentees go through a machine."

Tc : 09:44 "so counting the ballots may take a few days, its not going to be forever like back in the old days we had to sit and count, hand count them one by one."

So what can get your absentee ballot thrown out?

Tc : 00:53 "the decision is made by the two commissioners for what reasons ballots can be thrown away would be that if theres a miss marking on the ballot, somebody signs a pallet or they fill it out and pencil."

And what if your signature on the envelope of the absentee doesn't match....your signature on file... tc : 91:15 "if they dont match, its very hard to tell because everybody signs different as they get older.

If it was a different signature, a different name like anna smith signed jerry reed, then we know that we have to put that aside and thats no good.

Unless a candidate or the representative was to challenge that ballot, which they can do so, we target and then its up to a judge to decide."

15:37 "can i check my original registration to check my signature..... if you are worried about what your signature looked like when you registered way back when...you can come down to the board of elections and ask to see it... and if you are really worried that your absentee vote won't count for some reason....if you have requested one...or even sent one in already....you can still vote in person...either during early voting or on election day... tc : 03:58 "what our office does is the day after the election after we empty out our bags we pull our poll box out, the signature books and we have to match every single absentee that we have in this office to the voters name in that poll book and we have to find out if they went to the polls or not.

And if they went to the polls and theres a signature there then we put the ballot aside and it does not get counted."

Cardone says if you have any questions regarding voting, check with your board of elections website, and if you still don't get the answers you need, give them a call.

In utica, gary liberatore, news channel 2.> the