Stronger Together - Delivering Confidence in your Elections

Counties are responsible for administering elections, and our local partnerships help make them successful. We follow state laws and procedures for registering voters, training election workers, maintaining and testing polling equipment, and producing, collecting and counting ballots. We work closely with our cities, townships and school districts to ensure a smooth, accurate election process that voters can trust.

Much of that work is done before you enter your polling place. Before an election, we certify and train all municipal and school district clerks with election duties. Depending on the year, the number of elections and their location, we might train up to 150 clerks and deputies and 2,500 election workers.

We’re working even closer with cities and school districts beginning this year. Through a new agreement, the county is providing absentee ballot services — issuing ballot applications, accepting completed ballots and tallying the absentee votes — for all school districts and townships, and 21 of 22 cities. This change should streamline the process and enhance voter trust. This is increasingly important as more voters are choosing to cast absentee ballots.

All voter registrations in Dakota County are handled by our elections team. We work closely with city and township clerks to keep address information current, which makes registration easier for new voters. We also manage thousands of record updates for voters who have moved, people who turn 18 and voters who change their name.

www.dakotacounty.us, search elections