Erie County, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Erie County Board of Elections announced Sunday night the combined turnout for the 9-days of early voting leading up to the Election Day, and the turnout was so large, you could nearly fill the current Bills stadium.
70,077 is the amount of Erie County residents who voted early with 8,616 voters voting this last Sunday alone. Which almost exceeded the total turnout for the previous midterm elections, according to Erie County Board of Elections GOP Commissioner, Ralph Mohr.
"It is slightly lower than what we saw on the presidential election, but that's to be expected. Presidential elections have the highest voter turnout overall, with gubernatorial being the second highest. Really what we have to do is compare this to the last midterm gubernatorial election, which was in 2018. Of course, back then we didn't have early voting, but when you look at the total number of voters that cast ballots in that election, 25% of those voters already cast ballots early," said Commissioner Mohr.
Commissioner Mohr thinks it's safe to say, even with early voting and absentee ballots, that the turnout this year is going to well exceed the previous midterm election. He's also noticed some other trends including an increase in first-time voters.
"We've seen some increase in first time voters. Generally the early voting in the past has only had people that normally would vote on Election Day shifting to early vote. What we also saw is that a much broader expanse of voters are taking advantage of early voting. The first two years that we had early voting, it was primarily taken advantage of by people enrolled in the Democratic Party. Yet this year, we've seen a much larger increase of Republicans and unaffiliated voters taking advantage of the early voting," the commissioner said.
Voters shouldn't really expect anything different in terms of showing up for the vote today, Commissioner Mohr says there are only four towns and cities that don't have electronic polls and the check-in process has never been easier.
"It comes down to about 40 seconds to a minute, where we can check in a person, but the process for the voter is the same. They would go up to the table, identify themselves to the election inspector and then be given the ballot, which they'll be able to take to the table fill out and then deposit into the tabulator."
Unlike early voting, you must go to your designated poll place to vote today, November 8th, for these midterm elections. Go to https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/ to find your polling place in New York State.
Polls will be open from 6 a.m to 9 p.m. in Erie County.