(WBEN) - The polling machines are in place and early voting ballots have been tabulated. This Tuesday, June 27, 2023 is Erie County's Primary Election Day.
Polls opened at 6 a.m. ET and will close at 9 p.m. ET.
With an adjusted final nine-day early voting total of 4,551, including the 1,447 absentee ballots so far received, a total of 5,998 ballots have been cast. 4.06% of the 147,611 eligible voters voted before election day.
LISTEN LIVE TO WBEN:
"That's the lowest that we've had since we had early voting started. However, it's important to note that not every location has primaries this year, and only about 1/6 of the eligible voters in the county are eligible to vote in the primary elections," said Ralph Mohr, GOP Commissioner for Erie County's Board of Elections. "Of course, there are a few hot races and those have seen the turnouts so far."
Mohr adds that everything should be in place by Monday night.
"Everything is in place and today [Monday] we're taking the final steps to deploy all the equipment that's required on Election Day, to each of the polling locations. Early voting has been completed and the machines that were utilized for early voting, are being picked up and locked up until the votes are counted at nine o'clock tomorrow night. In addition to that, all the electronic poll books that we're going to use on election day and the voting machines, most have been delivered in the final places are being delivered today [Monday]."
During a normal election, Erie County utilizes about 500 voting machines according to Mohr. For the primaries this year, they use about 200 machines.
Mohr also reports no staffing or security concerns.
"There were four inspectors each day at each of their early voting sites for the hours that early voting was open. On election day, we have a minimum of four people at each of the polling locations, to check in the voters and to assist any voter who needs help and cast their vote.
Of course, the police are able to assist us in anything that we need, and we haven't had to circumstances to call them in a long time. In addition to that, we have employees from the Board of Elections that go out to each of the polling locations, and do checks throughout the course of the day."
Democratic Commissioner Jeremy Zellner reminds the public that you must go to you assigned polling location come Election Day. Early voters were allowed to vote at any one of the 38 polling locations in the county.
"Erie County voters should have got in the mail last week their election card, that tells them where to vote, if they haven't received it or if they need more information, they can go to elections.erie.gov and type in their information or they can call us at 716-858-8891 if they have any questions."