Process an Early Voting Ballot—Early/Counter Voting

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

You can use either the Counter program (on the EARLY VOTING tab) or the Voter Maintenance program (on the VOTER REGISTRATION tab) to process early voting ballots.

The Counter program allows temporary staff to process votes quickly and accurately. To process an early vote using Counter, the election must be set up for early voting and you must be within the early voting period.

  1. Go to EARLY VOTING > Early/Counter Voting.
  2. In the Current Voting Location field, select your early voting location and click OK.
  3. On the Find a Voter dialog, do a local search for the voter by name or registration number.
  4. On the Choose an Election dialog, select the election for which you want to process early voting and click OK.
  5. On the Voting Election dialog, check the message box on the left side of the dialog for messages indicating that the voter might not be eligible to vote. Verify the voter's residence address, political party affiliation, date of birth, and signature.
  6. If the voter says their residence address has changed, click Address Change and enter the new address information on the Voter New Address dialog. Any change to the residence address change must be entered prior to processing their early vote because the address change might affect the voter's precinct and ballot style. You can also modify the voter's mailing address and toggle their military/civilian status here, if they provide you with an update to this information.

  7. On the Choose an Election dialog, verify that the election for which you want to process early voting is selected and click OK. The Choose an Election dialog displays again because a change the voter's address might change their eligibility to vote in the election as well at their ballot style.

If the voter is not permitted to early vote because of the address change, the reason will be noted in large type in the message box. If this happens, explain the situation to the voter and process their vote as a provisional ballot.

  1. Check the voter's photo ID and then select a value in the Type of ID Provided field. If the voter has no valid ID, they cannot be issued a regular ballot or use the touchscreen machines; they can vote only by provisional ballot.
  2. Select the appropriate option in the Voting Method box—Optical Scan or Touch Screen.
Note: If the Optical Scan button is not available, it means you are not currently within the early voting period, as defined in the election record.
  1. If your early voting location uses the optical scan method and your county uses ballot numbers during early voting, enter the ballot number in the Ballot Number field.
  2. Click OK to complete processing of the early voting ballot. If Voter Focus 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 Handle Spoiled Ballots Printed at Voting Sites for instructions.

Runbeck ballot printers only. If your system does not use the option VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > Early Voting > Hide Tiebreaker, match the number on the ballot stub or cover sheet with the number printed on the Early Voting Voter Certificate (provided that your system uses the option VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > Early Voting > Print Early Voting Voter Certificate). Note that this number is not the ballot number; it is a random number generated by the system to help election workers match the voter with their correct ballot.