Residents can vote by mail in St. George municipal general election
By David Cordero
The City of St. George will conduct its municipal general election in a vote-by-mail process for three city council seats. Ballots have been mailed to registered voters ahead of the Nov. 5 Election Day.
Vote-by-mail ballots can be submitted in many ways:
—Mailed to the county clerk’s office (postmarked or otherwise marked as received by the post office no later than Nov. 4).
—Dropped off at the voting center on the day of the election at the Dixie Convention Center (1835 Convention Center Dr., St. George).
— Dropped off at drop boxes at five locations countywide.
Ballots can be dropped at any drop box regardless of a voter’s residence. These are the addresses of the drop boxes:
—St. George Branch Library (88 W 100 S).
—Washington City Branch Library (220 N 300 E).
—Hurricane Branch Library (36 S 300 W).
—Santa Clara Branch Library (1099 Lava Flow Dr., St. George).
—Washington County Administration Building (197 E. Tabernacle St.).
St. George residents can vote in person Nov. 5 at the Dixie Convention Center.
“The benefit we see with vote by mail is in the voter turnout rate, which represented a nearly three-fold increase when comparing our non-mayoral August 2019 Primary turnout (28.46 percent) vs. the August 2015 non-mayor Primary turnout (10.27 percent),” said St. George Mayor Jon Pike. “We hope to see an even larger turnout in the general election.”
The decision to vote by mail was made largely because Washington County had purchased new voting equipment and conducted the 2018 midterm elections on a vote-by-mail basis. Since most cities contract with Washington County to process ballots, the City of St. George had to decide to either purchase its own voting equipment or follow suit with vote-by-mail elections.
“The cost to conduct the municipal election did not decrease when we went by mail,” Pike noted. “While the cost to man vote centers greatly decreased, the price of sending ballots to approximately 42,000 registered voters was added.”
More information is available at sgcity.org/2019electioninformation and vote.utah.gov.
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