You or your spouse, parents, or children may contact your County Clerk to request an absentee ballot application by phone, fax, electronic mail, mail, or in person. The County Clerk will mail you the absentee ballot application or you can get an application in person at the County Clerk’s office. You can either return the completed application by mail or you can hand-deliver it to the County Clerk’s office. Your spouse, parents, or children, or a third party can not hand-deliver your completed application to the county clerk.

You can request an absentee ballot any time before an election if you know you are eligible to vote absentee. The County Clerk will send you a mail-in absentee ballot within 3 days of the state ballot printing deadline, which is 50 days before the election.

The deadline for applying for a mail-in absentee ballot is 7 days before an election. The completed application must be received by the County Clerk by mail or in-person by the 7-day deadline. The absentee ballot must be received in the County Clerk’s office by 6 PM local time on election day for the ballot to be counted.

If you applied for an absentee ballot and, after a reasonable time, have not received your mail-in ballot, you must contact the County Clerk and ask for a second ballot. The County Board of Elections will only count the first properly returned voted ballot.

Any person who has received a mail-in absentee ballot and discovers at least 7 days before the date of the election that he or she will be in the county on election day, and who has not voted the ballot, must cancel his or her ballot by returning it unvoted to the County Clerk’s office. There are no provisions in state law for returning an unvoted ballot less than 7 days before an election or on election day.

A voter may have assistance because of blindness, physical disability, or the inability to read English. Any person of the voter’s choice may assist the voter, except the voter’s employer or agent of the employer or an officer or agent of the voter’s union. The person assisting the voter must complete the portion of the voter assistance from on the absentee ballot inner envelope provided by the County Clerk. The person assisting the voter must make an oath declaring that the assistor marked the ballot under the directions of the voter requiring assistance.

A voting machine at the County Clerk’s office is available 12 (or more) working days before the election for those voters who are qualified to vote by absentee ballot in the County Clerk’s office. Contact your County Clerk to find out the hours and dates of absentee voting in your county.

You must fulfill one of the following criteria to be eligible:

• You will be out of the county on election day
• You are Military, their Dependents, or an Overseas Citizen (For more information, please review the Military and Overseas Page found on this web site.)
• You are Military personnel confined to base and learn of your confinement within seven days or less of an election
• You are a Student or resident who temporarily resides outside of the county
• You are a voter or the spouse of a voter who has surgery scheduled that will require hospitalization on Election Day
• You are a pregnant woman in your third trimester

OR

You are the following:

• Precinct election officer appointed to serve in precinct other than his own
• Alternate precinct officer
• County Board of Elections’ members
• County Board of Elections’ staff
• Deputy county clerk
• State Board of Elections’ staff

If you change your place of residence to a different state while the registration books are closed in the new state, you can apply for a mail-in absentee ballot or vote on the absentee voting machine only in President/Vice President elections.