Absentee Ballot Applications Available

Applications for absentee ballots for the November 8 election are available now.

They can be obtained at the Town Clerk’s office or on the Town Clerk’s web page. Applications can also be completed online and dowloaded on the Secretary of the State website.

By November 7, completed applications must be received by the Town Clerk in person at the Town Clerk’s office, by mail, or in the ballot box outside the Town Hall front entrance (pictured above).

Who can vote absentee

Qualified voters can vote absentee if they are unable to vote in person due to:

• Active service in the Armed Forces of the United States.
• Absence from town on the day of the election.
• Religious tenets that forbid secular activity on the day of the election.
• Duties as an election official at a polling place other than the town of Weston.
• Physical disability.
• Sickness.

A legislative change

Covid-19 is no longer a named qualification for voting absentee, but it is embedded in the category of “Sickness.”

Noting a change made in this year’s legislative session, Secretary of the State Mark Kohler said, “Access to absentee ballots was expanded this year, so voters should be aware that they may now be eligible to vote by absentee ballot.”

“This includes voters who are unable to go to their polling place because of a sickness or physical disability of another person,” said Secretary Kohler, citing as an example a caretaker of an immunocompromised person.

“Similarly,” he added, “a voter who, in the voter’s best judgment, is unable to appear in the polling place because of the continued presence of a sickness such as the Covid-19 virus, is eligible to vote by absentee ballot.”