Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Tuesday marks Election Day in Erie County, as come the end of the evening across the region, a number of local seats in government will be filled.
The marquee race in local government this year is for Erie County Executive between the Democratic incumbent Mark Poloncarz, who's looking to serve an unprecedented fourth-term in office, and his Republican challenger Chrissy Casilio, who's a newcomer to the governmental scene.
With 2023 being a local election year, the turnouts are usually on the lower end of the spectrum. However, Ralph Mohr, Commissioner of the Erie County Board of Elections, says there was a brisk absentee ballot return that saw interest in this year's election pick up as the process went along.
"This year, it started out well. We didn't meet even the first year projections, however, it really did pick up in the last few days of early voting with the highest amount of votes being cast for early voting on Sunday of this past week," said Mohr in an interview with WBEN.
"The turnout seems to suggest that those first-ring suburban towns, where they have the local contests, are certainly garnering the interest of the public."
According to the Erie County Board of Elections, the number of ballots cast over the adjusted nine days of early voting totaled 36,077, which included 4,802 ballots on the ninth and final day of early voting on Sunday. Mohr says the early voting process hit its peak during the presidential election of 2020, and it's since been pretty consistent and steady right along in Erie County.
So what is driving turnout for voting not just in early voting, but also for Tuesday's election across the region? Mohr says a number of local issues tend to drive turnout for various parts of the county.
"You have very highly-contested races in Tonawanda, Amherst, Cheektowaga, West Seneca, and that's where we expect to see the larger turnout," he said. "Many of the City of Buffalo races were decided during the primary, so we expect that area to be low, and many of those suburban or rural towns don't have any races at all. Either the people are cross-endorsed, or they don't have opponents, so we would expect turnout to be a little lower there as well. So, really, what we are looking for [Tuesday] is to take a look at those first-ring suburban towns, the large suburban towns, and see what the turnout there is. If early voting is any indication, it seems we're going to have decent turnout in West Seneca, Hamburg, Amherst, those areas which have good local contests that are up tomorrow."
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Are there any concerns with the voting process heading into Tuesday's election? While voter integrity and other matters are a concern among many, Mohr feels there are a number of safeguards in place to avoid any possible tampering of election results.
"We have 38 polling locations for early voting, so it's certainly very convenient for voters to go and cast their ballots. We've had nine days of early voting, and once you cast your ballot, it is registered so you're not able to go to any other location, and you're not able to show up on election day and try to cast a second ballot," Mohr explained. "We're very confident, and have done a great deal of work to make sure that our system is secure and people don't get second chances at the apple, and don't have the ability to cheat the system that way. So we're very confident in our election integrity system."
While the early voting ballots will not be counted officially until after the polls close at 9 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Mohr says results for those ballots should begin to show in short order.
"The early voting results usually come in within the first 10 minutes after the polls close [Tuesday] night, as well as absentee. We're going to start seeing election results within the first 15 minutes," he said. "Then we've instituted a new procedure for the past few elections, which has been working very well, where we have results that are transmitted right from various locations across the county to the Board of Elections. We don't have to wait for people and inspectors to drive the results into the board. We expect to have results popping up within the first 10 minutes after polls closed, and then we would expect a fair amount, primarily most of the election results should be in within an hour or so."
Polls across Erie County will re-open for the public at 6 a.m. EST before closing at 9 p.m. EST. WBEN will have LIVE and local election coverage once the polls close.
For those voting on Tuesday, people are required to go to the polling place which is assigned for their election district. If you have any questions, contact the Board of Elections or check out their website, elections.Erie.gov.