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Primary Voting
Voters can cast early ballots Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. and Monday from 8 a.m. to noon at the County-City Building in downtown South Bend and the County Services Building in downtown Mishawaka.
On Tuesday, voters can find their polling site at https://indianavoters.in.gov. They can also find a link to it on St. Joseph County's government website, https://www.stjosephcountyindiana.com/232/Voting-Elections
To see how candidates answered questionaires from the League of Women Voters and the American Democracy Project of Indiana University South Bend and The Tribune, visit www.VOTE411.org.
Article
SOUTH BEND — William Burton Sr. could squeeze in voting Tuesday between possibly taking his grandson to school and getting to work by 10 a.m., but he won’t have to.
The 54-year-old South Bend man decided Friday to join his wife Robin in early voting at the County-City Building. She has done it for years, but it was Burton’s first time.
“Earlier worked real good for me,” said Burton, who has Fridays off from his maintenance job at the Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo. “I always vote when it’s time to vote.”
Some of the increase might reflect heightened interest from voters who oppose Republican President Donald Trump and hope to see Democrats take control of Congress, Rethlake said, but she thinks it likely has more to do with an increase in contested primary races in both parties this year.
Despite the trend, those roughly 4,395 early votes in by late Friday still accounted for just 3 percent of the county’s roughly 145,000 active registered voters. Everyone else will be able to vote on Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at their local polling site.
In a slight change from the 2016 Primary Election, voters on Tuesday won’t be allowed to ask for a different party’s ballot once they’ve received a ballot and a poll worker has entered their choice on a digital poll book. In the 2016 elections, the first for the iPad-like, internet-connected poll worker devices, some voters realized they wanted to vote in the other party’s ballot once they got into the voting booth and saw who the candidates were, and poll workers agreed to give them the other party’s ballot, Rethlake said.
State election officials have since determined this isn’t allowable under state law, and poll workers have been trained to follow that guidance, said Rethlake, who urged voters to look carefully at sample ballots that will be available at polling sites before taking their ballots.
The Democratic ballot will list six candidates vying for the chance to challenge incumbent 2nd District U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski in November. Alphabetically, they are Douglas Carpenter, Pat Hackett, Mel Hall, Yatish Joshi, Roland Leech and John Petroff. Only Hackett, Hall and Joshi have actively campaigned.
Joshi’s name appears as “Joshi Yatish,” making it last on the ballot because of alphabetical order. Joshi chose for it to appear that way because most people identify him as “Joshi,” said his campaign manager, Araquel Bloss.
Incumbent Democratic county Assessor Rosemary Mandrici faces challenges from Darren Batteast and Kevin Klaybor.
Statewide, Republicans Mike Braun, Luke Messer and Todd Rokita are competing for the nomination to take on incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly in the U.S. Senate.
Other high-profile races Tuesday include two Republicans running for Indiana State Senate District 11, which covers Granger, Penn Township and much of northern Elkhart County. Businesswoman Linda Rogers is challenging incumbent Sen. Joe Zakas, who has held the seat since 1982 and is the Senate’s longest continually serving current member.
Rethlake said there are a relatively large number of contested primary races for township offices this year. Those are happening in Centre, Clay, German, Madison, Penn and Portage townships.