Absentee voting for their state's 2016 presidential primary starts Friday for South Dakota voters.
The big day is June 7, when South Dakota has its primary. South Dakota Secretary of State Shantel Krebs talked about the process.
“A citizen that’s registered to vote in South Dakota, they can go down to their country auditor’s office and vote there with a valid photo I.D.,” Krebs said. “If they don’t have a valid I.D. with them, they can sign a personal identification affidavit and then vote a regular ballot. For those citizens that are serving overseas as our military men and women, or citizens living overseas, they can request an absentee ballot via an email or fax to their county auditor. That county auditor then will email that ballot to them.”
There’s an important difference between the Democratic primary and the Republican primary. The Democratic' primary is open: That means registered Democrats and registered independents can vote in it. For the Republicans, the primary is closed: Just registered Republicans can take part.
“We expect the June 7thprimary here in South Dakota to have a higher turnout, and of course that’s in relationship to the presidential primaries going on across the nation,” Krebs said. “We have voter registration numbers continually coming in, of course increasing and have increased over the past several months. We have over 520,000 registered voters in South Dakota, so with that, I think the turnout at the polls that day on June 7th will also be a direct reflection of those presidential primaries.”
To vote absentee, you can go in person to your county auditor’s office, or you can do it by mail. And if you haven’t registered to vote, that has to happen 15 days before the election.