Primary voting starts early

Utahns can go to the polls Tuesday to vote in the June 27 statewide primary elections.

What? You can vote two weeks before Election Day?

Yep.

But how convenient Utah's new early voting may be for you depends on how accommodating your local county clerk is.

For example, in Salt Lake County, clerk Sherrie Swensen has four so-called "satellite" voting locations to accommodate what she believes will be less than 10 percent voter turnout countywide. Polls will be open for two full weeks in the Salt Lake County Complex. Polls will be open for a few days each in the South Jordan Library, the Hunter Library and the Whitmore Library.

Davis County will have three locations for early voting — the county offices in Farmington, the Bountiful Library and the Layton Library.

Utah County, however, will have only one early voting location — the clerk's office itself in the county offices in Provo.

In part to save money on the new, federally required electronic voting machines, Utah lawmakers last session authorized early voting in an attempt to overcome possible crowding at the polls on Election Day as voters learn how to use the machines.

Such early voting has been available in a number of states, including Nevada, for some time. Early voting has lessoned crowding at the polls, although it has not necessarily resulted in more people actually voting.

Swensen said one reason why she doesn't expect overcrowding in this month's primary is because fewer Utahns have been voting in primaries since legislators moved the primary from September to June.

"We had 42 percent voter turnout in the last September primary; now turnout runs between 6 percent and 10 percent," said Swensen.

But she hopes early voting hopefully will catch on for the November general election, and long voter lines can be avoided. Another reason why long lines could develop in the state's most populous county is that only about 3,200 electronic voting machines will be available throughout the county compared to 5,000 of the old punch card voting machines

The new Utah law has one quirk — you can only vote early from June 13 to Friday, June 23. Primary Election Day is Tuesday, June 27. But you can't do early voting on Monday, June 26, unless you pick up a paper absentee ballot at the clerk's office that day.