The Elections Department recommends voters only have friends or family deliver their ballots. Ballots can be dropped off outside the courthouse in the box designated for the Treasury Department. This is located on the 3rd Avenue entrance. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable having you deliver his/her ballot, but they don’t want to mail it, you can offer to drive them or get a volunteer from your team to drive them to the courthouse.When the Election Department mails the ballots out October 9th, there’s time for voters to receive a ballot and mail it back in.
In June, USPS said that they wouldn’t guarantee delivery of a voted ballot that was mailed within a week of election day. In the letter USPS sent to state elections officials there was a distinct difference between first class mail being delivered within two to five days after it is received and marketing class, which has a 3 to 10 day mail delivery time. First class is more expensive because the county pays for delivery both ways at the first class rate. Marketing class is cheaper because the bill only includes what is mailed out and returned. In the primary, Yellowstone County used first class to mail the ballots and probably will do so again.
Conversations with letter carriers and postal workers in Missoula, Great Falls, and Billings confirmed that the sorting machines have been dismantled and scrapped and the facing machines are gone and cannot be returned to service. The postal workers are now under a gag order.
February 29, 2024