Cast those ballots! Early voting helps move Dutchess County toward Election Day

DUTCHESS COUNTY — If Dutchess County Board of Elections Commissioner Elizabeth Soto’s hopes are realized, locations all around the county will be filled with residents proudly sporting “I voted” stickers — even before Halloween candies have all been purchased.

The possibility is the result of the state-wide voting law that was put into effect on Jan. 1, which will allow early voting between Saturday, Oct. 26, and Sunday Nov. 3, at five locations throughout the county. 

She explained the state requires “at least four sites per 50,000 voters. We have 183,000 voters so had to have four sites. Then both commissioners decided we needed one additional site to cover the whole county.”

Although not everyone is happy with the locations that were chosen, particularly along the “eastern corridor,” Soto says they were based on “population, demographics,” and the all important cell service available in the area. Political party affiliation, she said, had no impact on the selection. 

She acknowledged, “People in North East and Amenia are still complaining. We had originally looked at Stanford, but for early voting, everything is live with electric poll books, and cell service in Stanford was too iffy, so that’s why we went with Millbrook.”

Soto said cell service is critical because voting information from each location is uploaded to the central office every two minutes. If a problem — such as a tower going down — is detected, the election board calls the local election site and has it switch to Wi-Fi.

The immediacy of each vote’s registration on the central system means that no one can cast a ballot in one location and then try to speed to another for a second vote, thereby ensuring election validity.

Soto is hoping that the early voting will lead to greater participation, but says “We won’t know until Nov. 6.” 

She said on the Sunday before Election Day, machines used in the early voting will be transported to the Board of Elections where, at approximately 8 p.m. on election night, “a bipartisan team of techs will close out the machines” and  deliver the records to the tally room, where votes will be counted starting at the 9 p.m. close of polls. 

She expects the early results will be posted between 9:15 and 9:30 p.m. with the tallies beginning to post around 9:30 p.m. Results of absentee ballots, which she says can be critical in local elections, will not be available until the following week.

According to Soto, this year’s early voting system is not “experimental, but we did it in advance of the general election to give us enough time to get everything in order and also to get any little kinks we might run into fixed, so for the April 28, presidential primary — and the turnout is going to be phenomenal — we’ll be prepared,” as well as for the June primary and November 2020 presidential election.  

Any Dutchess County resident who is registered to vote, no matter their home address or their reason for wanting to vote early, may do so at any of the following locations: Millbrook firehouse, 20 Front St., Millbrook; Board of Elections, 47 Cannon St., Poughkeepsie; Fishkill Town Hall, 807 Route 52, Fishkill; Rhinebeck Town Hall, 80 E. Market St., Rhinebeck; or Union Vale Town Hall, 249 Duncan Road, Lagrangeville.

Early voting times for all sites are: Saturday, Oct. 26, from noon to 5 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 27, from noon to 5 p.m.; Monday, Oct. 28, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday, Oct. 29, from noon to 8 p.m.; Wednesday, Oct. 30, from noon to 8 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 31, from 7 a.m. to  3 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 1, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 2, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, Nov. 3, from noon to 5 p.m.