Exterior Building Hopes To Help During COVID-19

Mahaska County Auditor Sue Brown

The Mahaska County Auditor’s office announces in-person absentee voting will begin on Monday, October 5, 2020. To take into consideration the health and safety of voters and employees of Mahaska County this will be conducted in a temporary voting building that has been placed directly in front of the Mahaska County Courthouse, 106 S. 1st St., Oskaloosa, IA. Voters can find the handicapped accessible building open Monday-Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for the purpose of casting an absentee ballot. Other hours it will be open are the following Saturdays in October: Saturday, October 10th and 17th from 8 am to noon; Saturday, October 24th from 8 am to 5 pm and Saturday, October 31st from 9 am to 5 pm.

If you have already submitted an absentee ballot request form to the Auditor’s office the first day those ballots can be mailed is Monday, October 5, 2020. Watch your mailbox that week for delivery of your absentee ballot and instructions. The last day you can request an absentee ballot to be mailed to you is Saturday, October 24th. If you will be returning your absentee ballot by mail it must be postmarked Monday, November 2, 2020 and received in the Auditor’s office by noon on Monday, November 9, 2020 to be counted. If you are hand delivering your absentee ballot it must be received in the Auditor’s office by 9:00 p.m. on November 3, 2020.

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A new temporary structure appeared in front of the Mahaska County Courthouse this week, creating a buzz as to its purpose. Oskaloosa News spoke with Mahaska county auditor Sue Brown about the building and its purpose.

We’re standing in front of a shed that has caused a ruckus in town. Could you tell us a little bit about your shed and what the purpose is going to be?

We were brainstorming in this time of COVID and ways that we could serve that voters for absentee voting. And in order to keep voter safe and people in the courthouse safe rather than having everybody in all one spot, we came up with this idea. And this, this little building is going to be out front here in the in front of the courthouse until November till the election. And voters will be able to come up to it. We’re making it handicap accessible and be able to vote inside.

Alright, so people will come here. So absentee voting actually starts, was it Monday, the fifth Monday morning.

Okay, so let’s kind of go through some of those. If people are wondering how did they vote? Just kind of so everyone knows you sent out a press release as more detailed information. Yeah, no include that with this. But just some basics about what folks should be. Okay.

Monday, well, in-person voting will begin. So they can come here to the courthouse and come to this little building and walk in and fill out an absentee request form and sign it, and we’ll give them a ballot, they can vote and put it in an envelope, and we put it in the election box and save it for the day that the absentee is are counted. So that’s in-person voting. And that starts Monday, and it goes through November 2 at 5 pm. We are going to have this open, and our office will be open on all Saturdays in October, October 10, and 17th will be open from eight to noon. And October 24, from eight to five and October 31, from nine to five. So those are some options for people that work that want to come in absentee vote that they can choose a Saturday. Okay,

So somebody goes to show up to vote, what kind of identification in a way that documents.

Absentee voting and at the polls, you’ll need to have a photo ID with your current address on it. If you don’t have it with the current address on your photo ID, you’ll need to bring a piece of mail that proves your residence residency.

All right. So November 3, once again, is election day.

And one of the questions that I’ve heard already is what’s the difference between having it out here coming inside, you know, somebody COVID positive is still good.

Right? I understand that. I’m just trying to our lobby isn’t real good for social distancing. And I know this isn’t very big either. But we can kind of work with that. Maybe not so many people at one time inside.

Approximately how many voters will this be able to survive any one time?

Probably we haven’t totally set it up yet, but I’m saying I’m thinking for maybe six.

Posted by on Oct 1 2020. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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