[Baltimore Sun] With early voting closed, nearly 1 million Marylanders have voted in-person
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After eight days of early voting, almost 1 million Marylanders have headed to early voting centers to cast their decision in this year’s general election in person, with over 500,000 more voting by mail.
Early voting began on Oct. 24 and closed Thursday, with 994,663 of the state’s 4,204,572 eligible voters casting their ballots, according to data from the Maryland State Board of Elections. For those who preferred to vote by mail, 568,359 cast their ballots.
Of the nearly 1 million in-person early voters, 520,690 were registered Democrats, 303,745 were registered Republicans and 170,228 were registered as unaffiliated or other. Compared to totals from 2020 about 7,500 more voters cast their ballots at early voting centers.
Queen Anne’s, Calvert, Talbot and St. Mary’s counties had the highest percentage of early voter turnout, all above 30% of eligible voters. Baltimore City had the lowest percentage of turnout, with 13.4% of eligible voters casting their vote early.
In Anne Arundel County, 24.86% of eligible voters turned out to vote early for a total of 102,552 voters. The last time the county had over 100,000 early voters was in 2020, but David Garreis, election director for Anne Arundel County, said the two years can’t be compared given the circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
“It was a heavy turnout, and, like I say, compared to historic standards, I think you can say we’re having a historic election right now, which is great, absolutely, is what we want to do,” said David Garreis, election director for Anne Arundel County. “We want people to come out and vote. We want people to express their, make their voices be heard and express their opinions, and people are doing that.”
Early voting in Baltimore “went great,” according to Baltimore City Election Director Armstead Jones. There were the usual hiccups, Jones said, but nothing that interfered with people voting.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, I thought that it was what I anticipated it to be. It’s a very highly contested election, nationwide, local races,” Jones said.
The city planned to have more election judges at its early voting sites than usual, Jones said, to make sure that people could receive help and their questions could be answered. For Election Day, Jones suggested that voters avoid coming during the busy periods of first thing in the morning, lunchtime and after work to beat long lines.
“I think we had one or two sites that didn’t finish up until almost 9:30, a quarter to 10 last night because at the time people got off from work the lines were out the door, wrapped around, whatever,” Jones said. “But the important thing is to exercise your right to vote which is very important.”
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