As people make their final decisions and begin to submit ballots or look to register to vote, they’re being reminded of the protocol surrounding those ballots, the measures in place to help make voting as easy as possible for residents and the impact of pushing the election back two weeks.

Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch told the Standard-Examiner that the most important rule for mail-in voting is to always be in control of one’s ballot.

“Always be in control of your ballot and your envelope,” he said. “Integrity is voters taking responsibility for their own ballots. Make sure you keep them safe. Keep them secret — it’s your state constitutional right to have a secret ballot.”

He said it’s also beneficial to be well-informed on the candidates.

“Another important thing is to do your research,” he said. “To me, the biggest benefit of voting by mail is informed voting. You know exactly what races are on your ballot three weeks before election day, so you have plenty of time to look online, do research, ask your neighbors, friends and family and make a more informed decision than just simply showing up on election day and hoping you have all of the information that’s on the ballot.”

Voters are human and mistakes are a possibility while filling out a ballot.

Hatch said if someone does make a mistake on a ballot, there is little need to go through the process of going out and getting a new one.

“As long as the voter’s intent is clear and obvious, we’ll be able to record those votes correctly,” he said. “Let’s say you accidentally vote for too many people — it says, ‘vote for two’ and you vote for three — all you have to do is scratch out the name of the person you voted for but didn’t want. Scratch out the name and put ‘no’ next to it and then circle the name or names of the candidates that you do want and put ‘yes’ off to the side.”

He said that these ballots will be counted correctly.

“Our machines will detect that unusual marking and will kick it out for humans to review,” he said. “That process is done by sworn election judges. It’s always in pairs of two. It’s supervised, logged and audited, so it’s a safe process.”

Torn ballots or ballots that get a sticky substance on them do have to be traded out for a new ballot.

“If you do, don’t try to vote the old (ballot),” Hatch said. “If you do, that’s a felony. We’ll catch it and prevent it from happening and then you’ll hear from either the county attorney or the FBI.

This year’s primary and general elections were pushed back by two weeks statewide to help facilitate a special election in the state’s 2nd Congressional District. While Weber County won’t be part of the special election, it will mean a few changes due to the primary election now falling a day after Labor Day.

“State law requires that we have early (in-person) voting for at least four days,” Hatch said. “We usually do that the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday before election day. Because Monday is Labor Day, we’ve shifted all that up so Sept. 1 — that’s Friday (before the election) — that’s the last day for early in-person voting. Monday will be a holiday and we’ll be working, but we’ll be working just in our office. If you don’t vote early by Friday, Sept. 1, you’ll have to wait until election day.”

He said that the later date will likely have some other minor impacts on how the election proceeds.

“It’s hard to get elections help on a public holiday, so our core elections team is going to be processing and doing as much as we can the Monday before to try and get all of the ballots that we pick up over the weekend processed and reported as of election night, but there may be a slight delay in the full reporting of election results,” he said. “The key thing is, the election’s not over until two weeks after, and it always has been. … The results on election night are always unofficial and remain unofficial until the official canvas, which is done by the cities two weeks after.”

For more information, including important registration dates, candidate information, ballot dropbox locations and other election information for Weber County voters, visit https://www.weberelections.gov/primaryinformation2023.