Great Falls voters have returned about 32% of mail-in and drop off ballots ahead of Tuesday's city election, with a new birth year requirement causing some ballots to be rejected.
Cascade County Election Administrator Terry Thompson said election officials sent out 30,800 ballots and have received about 9,800 back so far.
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"We're right about 9,800 of those coming back. So we're at about 32% of the number that we sent out that have come back," Thompson said.
However, a couple of hundred ballots have been deemed invalid due to missing or incorrect information.
"Out of those 274, those are the ballots that have been rejected due to no signature mismatched signature, no year of birth or mismatched year of birth," Thompson said.
This election cycle marks the first year Great Falls residents must write their birth year on ballot envelopes, in accordance with a new Montan law.
"The highest percentage, about 54% of those 274 ballots are related to no birth year being put on there or it mismatch. And most of it's not mismatch. Those are fewer. But it's actually people not putting the birth year on the envelope at all," Thompson said.
Election officials are working to contact voters whose ballots were rejected to help them resolve the issues.
Another challenge facing election administrators is the number of undeliverable ballots due to adresses that are not updated. Thompson said 1,252 ballots out of 30,863 sent were returned as undeliverable.
"The number of undeliverable ballots that we get back because voters did not update their address with us. So for this election we're actually at 1252 ballots came back out of the total, 30,863 the that we sent out. And that's a high number," Thompson said.
Thompson expects final turnout to reach around 38%, which would be considered good for a municipal election.
"I don't expect it to be probably I think it'll be under 40%. It will probably be under 38%. We're at 32% today. We have 24 hours ago, a little over 24 hours ago. So I would imagine if we get to 38%, that'll be a pretty good number," Thompson said.
Voters can drop off ballots at Exhibition Hall and the Courthouse Annex from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
