Process an Early Vote—Voter Registration

During early voting, voters come to the elections office or other early voting locations and cast their ballots, either by writing on optical scan ballots or using touchscreen voting machines. Votes cast during early voting are tabulated immediately.

You can use Voter Focus to process these early votes. There are two methods in Voter Focus:

VOTER REGISTRATION > Voter Maintenance (described below)

EARLY VOTING > Early/Counter Vote

  1. Access the voter's record via a local search and, on the Maint tab, verify that their status is Active or Inactive.

Note: Processing an early vote for an Inactive voter automatically changes their status to Active with a reason code of Reinstate because voted.

  1. Verify the voter's residence address, date of birth, political party affiliation, and signature.

If the voter has provided a change of residence address, see Change a Mail-Ballot Voter's Residential Address. Changes to the voter's residence address must be done before the ballot is issued; otherwise the voter might not receive the correct ballot style.

  1. Click the Vote-By-Mailtab. If you are in the early voting period for any election in your Voter Focus system and this is the first voter record you've accessed, you will be asked to select your early voting location.

  2. On the Vote-By-Mail tab, click Early/In office Vote. If multiple elections are scheduled, you will be asked to choose an election.

  3. On the Voting Election dialog, check the message box on the left side of the dialog for messages pertaining to the voter's eligibility or previous Vote-By-Mail Request.

If the voter is a MARG voter, you will see a note to that effect in the message box. Check the voter's photo ID and then select a value in the Type of ID Provided field. If the MARG voter has no valid ID, they cannot be issued a regular ballot; they can vote only by provisional ballot.

  1. Verify the option selected in the Voting Method box—Optical Scan or Touch Screen—is correct. The default here is set by your Voter Focus administrator, but you can change it if it's invalid for your early voting location.

  2. If your early voting location is using the optical scan method and your county uses ballot numbers during early voting, enter the ballot number in the Ballot Number field.

  3. Click OK to complete processing of the early voting ballot. If your Voter Focus system is set up to print Early Voting Voter Certificates and labels, the certificate and label(s) will print to your default and DYMO printers, respectively.

If you are using a ballot printer, the ballot will print. Should the ballot be spoiled, see How to Handle Spoiled Ballots Printed at Voting Sites for instructions.