Erie County, N.Y. (WBEN) - Early voting is currently underway in Erie County and operating smoothly as this Tuesday marks one week until Election Day.
Early voting started Saturday and residents of the county have shown up in droves for the first two days, "In the first half hour that we had early voting, we had 600 people show up to vote in Erie County," says Erie County Republican Elections Commissioner, Ralph Mohr.
As far as security goes for polling, there isn't much changing in Erie County but the commissioners are standing by what has been working, "We are taking security very seriously. We have a plan in place and we've been implementing that plan. We have board employees which go to the various polling locations and make sure that everything's going okay. Then we have had meetings with the police departments, from the various jurisdictions and so far we haven't had any trouble and we don't expect to have any," Commissioner Mohr says.
"We've been monitoring everything that we can, we've got our inspectors manning each of the locations and working hard and we haven't had any issues so far," says Erie County Democratic Elections Commissioner, Jeremy Zellner.
Given the heightened and intense political climate and conflict over the last several years, some poll workers nationally have expressed concern over potential conflict that could arise at the polls coupled with reported observers attempting to "disrupt" the vote.
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"I haven't seen any hard statistics about that (disruptors) here in Erie County," Zellner tells WBEN. "We've gone through two of the biggest elections [of] a lifetime here in 2016 and 2020. We had really no incidents of significance where anything happened. It's basically because folks understand when you go to the polls, you're there to do one thing and one thing only, [and] that's cast a ballot and have your voice heard. Even last year in 2020, when we had COVID raging, [with] lines all around the county for early voting, folks were very respectful and we didn't have one incident at the poll," Commissioner Zellner said.
Early voting ends Sunday, "If they're voting early, they don't have to use their driver's license or their voter registration card, they can utilize those as scan ins. When they get to the poll worker, the poll worker will scan them into our software which will pull up their name and make the process easier. It's called a fast pass system," Commissioner Zellner adds.
Polls are open, 9 a.m - 5 p.m. on the weekends and noon - 9 p.m. on weekdays. There are currently 38 polling locations in Erie County, visit elections.erie.gov to find your polling place.
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