For the most part, the 2020 General Election is history! Hats off to the voters in Brown County who came out overwhelmingly to vote on November 3rd either by absentee/mail or voting in person at the polls. We are pleased to say that 92.47% of the registered voters in Brown County cast a ballot. This is well above the state average of 79.9% and far exceeds the national average of 66.3%. Kudos to all those who took the time to exercise their right to vote!

One of the last steps in the election cycle was to select two precincts and hand count the votes cast in the three federal contests. That Post election review was conducted on November 16th. The precincts selected by lot were Sleepy Eye Ward 2 and Prairieville Township. I am pleased to report that the manual counts matched exactly to the machine counts that had previously been reported.

There are so many people that played a role in the success of the 2020 elections! A huge shout out to the A-T staff and temps who worked tirelessly in providing ballots for voters to vote safely at home and answer questions so that voters would have confidence in the Minnesota election process. We were thankful for all of the assistance provided by other departments within the county to ensure that we continued to meet the daily timelines with accepting ballots. The post office was also an integral part of this election and went out of their way to get all ballots to us on Election Day so they could be counted. We are especially grateful for the election judges who served in our precincts amidst COVID concerns. Voters in Brown County can be assured that with this cast of players we were able to get all votes accepted and processed with accuracy and transparency.

Property Tax

Needless to say, the office has also been preparing the 2021 Proposed Property Tax Notices. Taxpayers should be seeing those notices in their mailbox soon. It should be noted that the Proposed Notices are provided so that taxpayers can see the changes in spending in each of the jurisdictions. Values were discussed at meetings in the spring of this past year and were finalized at the Board of Review in June. Issues regarding homesteading of properties should be discussed with the Assessor. Brown County has scheduled their Proposed Hearing for Dec. 1st at 6 p.m.