As St. Paul gears up for the trash referendum on Tuesday, many residents have already made their voices heard.
Ramsey County officials do not have the data to know if it's directly correlated, but there's no doubt St. Paul is voting early at a high rate than the 2015 election. The numbers show three times as many people taking advantage of absentee voting.
In two days this week the early voting centers processed as many ballots as all of the preceding weeks of in-person absentee and mail ballots, which began Sept. 20. There are now eight on-site locations across the county to vote before Nov. 5.
"Starting this election, we're introducing what are called electronic poll books at each polling place, so this is a way to speed things up for voters, to make things easier and more reliable when it comes to that check-in process with election judges at the poll."