Spokane area voters are marking and returning their ballots early this season.
Sandra Noe says she was dropping off her ballot and her husband’s ballot at the post office on Geiger Boulevard in west Spokane today [Monday]. She says it was so full that she couldn’t get them in. Not only that, she says, as she pulled them out, several others came with them.
“It was worrying me. I thought, you know, anybody could come through here and who knows what they would do with it. They talk about voter fraud all the time and I just thought this is the perfect opportunity if all these boxes are like this, all over Spokane or all over the state even," Noe said.
Today is [Monday was] a federal holiday, so the boxes apparently hadn’t been emptied over the weekend.
Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton says voters in large numbers are also dropping off ballots in the county’s ballot drop boxes. She says all of those were emptied earlier in the day and most will be on a daily basis until the election.
“This is really just about voters who want to get their votes done. They just want this over with so they are marking their ballots and they are getting them in," she said.
They’re also dropping off ballots in person at the county elections office or calling if they have questions, something she endorses.
Dalton says some Spokane County voters received yellow security envelopes with their ballots, other received white envelopes with yellow stripes. Both are valid. She says her office can no longer buy the traditional yellow, so they're using up their stock, while transitioning to the white.