– KMC Voter’s Corner – Finding ways to make your vote count!

***image1***Q: Do states really count absentee ballots?

A: You may have heard that absentee ballots will only be counted if necessary. While state laws vary, this is often the case. For example, if a candidate for a certain office is winning by 10,000 votes before the 5,000 absentee ballots are counted, it’s not necessary to count them. But absentee voting is still vitally important to our election process.

We never know how close a race will be. How many times through our history has a candidate’s supporters falsely assumed their candidate was safe or didn’t have a chance to win? It’s easy to underestimate the volume of absentee voters. Look around you – we’re all absentee voters. Defense Department employees and dependents alone represent a huge number of citizens. Add other government employees, multinational corporations and private citizens who will be out of town on election day, and you can see that the absentee vote is often needed to count.