What are my rights as a voter?
- Take time off work to vote without losing pay and without taking personal leave or vacation time.
- Vote if you are in line on Election Day by 8 p.m.
- Register on Election Day if you can provide the required proof of residence.
- Sign in to vote by confirming your identity orally and asking another person to sign for you if you cannot sign your name.
- Ask for help, including from anyone you choose to bring with you to the polls to assist you, except for an agent of your employer or union, or a candidate.
- Bring your children with you to vote.
- Vote if you are not currently incarcerated for a felony conviction.
- Vote if you are under a guardianship unless a judge has specifically revoked your right to vote.
- Get a replacement ballot if you make a mistake on your ballot before you cast it.
- File a complaint if you are unhappy with the way an election is being run.
- Bring a sample ballot with you into the voting booth.
- Bring a copy of the voter's bill of rights to the polling place.
What should I expect when I go to vote?
When you vote in Rochester, you receive a paper ballot to mark your choices by filling in the oval next to each of your selections. After you complete your ballot, you will submit it by personally putting it into the ballot tabulator at your polling place.
Voting Equipment
Ballot Tabulator
You will vote on a paper ballot.
If you are voting on Election Day or during the direct balloting period in the 7 days before Election Day, you will insert your ballot directly into the ballot tabulator.
The tabulator will notify you as a voter of any possible errors on your ballot.
Assistive Voting Technology
The other voting equipment in every Olmsted County voting location is the OmniBallot. This machine is designed to help voters who may need assistance with marking their ballot but would like to vote independently. The equipment can display the ballot in alternate sizes and formats and can also read the ballot to voters using headphones. The machine will mark the ballot with the choices the voter selected.
All polling places meet state and federal accessibility standards, including:
- Curb cuts were needed
- Accessible parking spaces, if parking is provided to all voters
- Signage indicating an accessible entrance and route in the building
- Accessible voting booths with a chair
- Seating available for voters waiting to vote
- Notepads are available to communicate in writing
- Magnifier for election material and the ballot
- Sufficient space for voters in wheelchairs
Assistance with voting
If you or anyone voting needs assistance for any reason on Election Day or when casting an in-person absentee ballot, you may:
- Get assistance from a person of your choice, except your employer, an officer or agent of your union, or a candidate for election.
- Get the assistance of two election judges from different major political parties.
- Use the OmniBallot: Each polling place, including in-person voting locations during absentee voting, has at least one voting machine accessible to voters with disabilities, including those with a vision impairment or difficulty using a pen.
- It allows voters who require assistance marking the ballot themselves to vote independently by indicating their choices using a touchscreen or headphones in combination with a keypad marked in Braille. After it prints your selections, you take the ballot and deposit it into the optical scan ballot counter along with all the other ballots at that voting location.
- Use curbside voting to register and vote without leaving your vehicle. Two election judges, members of different major political parties, will come outside to assist the voter.
The election judges or other individuals who assist a voter may not request, persuade, induce, or attempt to persuade or induce the voter to vote for any particular political party or candidate. An individual assisting a voter may not reveal to anyone the name of any candidate for whom the voter has voted, or anything that occurred while assisting the voter.
Help from family, friends, or neighbors
You can bring a family member, friend, neighbor or anyone you choose to help you vote. The only exception is that you can't get help from your employer, your union or a candidate for office.
Your assistant can help you in all parts of the voting process, including in the voting booth. However, helpers can only physically mark ballots for up to three voters in an election. You can show your ballot privately to an election judge to check that it is correctly marked.
Like election judges, helpers are not allowed to influence your vote or share how you vote with others.
See Minnesota Statute 204C.15 for more information about how you get assistance when voting.
Curbside voting is available
Voters unable to enter a polling place may register and vote without leaving their vehicle. If you or someone with you at a polling place would like to use curbside voting, notify a volunteer or an election judge.
When you use curbside voting, an election judge will ask for your name as a voter and look up your name in the roster to verify that you are registered and have not already voted by absentee ballot. Then, a team of two election judges will:
- take a Certificate of Registered Voter form and a Voter Registration Application (if you are not already registered) to your car;
- bring the ballot, clipboard, pen, secrecy folder, and "I Voted" sticker to the car;
- allow you to mark the ballot, and then ask you to wait while they bring your ballot back into the polling place to insert into the ballot counter; and
- return to your car to let you know that your ballot has been accepted.
