Cities received money from the Secretary of State’s office to provide additional protections in the polling place. In Blaine, this money bought barriers, hand sanitizer, and cleaning supplies. City leaders and election judges also took time to plan movement and spacing.
“What we’ve done here is space the tables as far apart as possible, and then we had to go so far as to place the election judges are far apart as possible too, so that took more space to do that,” said Blaine City Clerk Cathy Sorensen.
With the additional materials, and the additional concerns, setting up at the polling places began early. Election judges were all able to get into polling places on Monday so they could start setting up and thinking about how to layout the space.
“The hardest part was planning for something that you don’t know what is really going to happen,” said Sorensen.
With absentee voting number higher than ever, she wasn’t sure how busy the polling places would be. Ultimately, polling places were slow this year. The primary had about a 20 percent voter turnout in Blaine, and more than half of those votes were cast absentee. Blaine city leaders cannot remember a time when the absentee vote has outpaced the in person vote.
Sorensen plans to survey election judges about what worked well and what still needs improvement before the general election.
“This was a good dress rehearsal for November,” said Sorensen.
Blaine is considering adding some type of drive through voting for the general election to give voters more options.
