SAN ANTONIO – Despite being 65 years old, many voters like Catherine Summerville chose to vote early at the AT&T Center on Wednesday instead of using their mail-in ballots.
“I had initially asked for a ballot over 60 days ago, but then I changed my mind,” Summerville said. “I think it’s a safer option to vote in person.”
She isn’t alone.
The Elections Office Facebook page shows 1,375 mail-in ballots had been cancelled as of Wednesday.
Summerville is among the voters who’ve heard about potential problems with mail delivery, although the Bexar County Elections Office hasn’t reported any so far.
The office has already received a record 45,000 mail-in ballots, nearly half of the estimated 99,000 mail-in ballot requests its received.
A spokeswoman for Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said that mail-in ballots that have been filled out can be brought to the Bexar County Elections Office at South Frio and Interstate 35 South, which is the only drop-off location in Bexar County.
Others who now to choose to vote in person can go to any polling site with or without the yet-to-be-completed mail-in ballot.
If they don’t have it, voters can tell the election judge at the polling site that they’d rather cast a ballot. The judge then calls the Elections Office to cancel the mail-in ballot.
“Evidently, it took them like 10, 15 minutes for them to process that for me,” Summerville said.
But after that, she said it only took two minutes to vote.
Asked about the possibility that a vote could be counted twice, Steve Heinrich, an elections office mail clerk, said, “Every voter has a voter registration number. A record for that voter. We only accept one ballot for each voter.”
Heinrich said after an election judge contacts them, “We cancel the mail ballot and then clear that, and then they’re able to vote in person at the poll site. If a ballot shows up tomorrow in the mail, it’s already canceled. We don’t accept it. We don’t let people vote twice.”
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