2024 election notebook: Final early in-person voting tally for Monroe County 13% better than 2016
In Monroe County, Indiana, the final tally for early in-person voting in the Nov. 5, 2024 election is 30,625.
That’s about 13 percent better than the 27,024 voters who cast a ballot early in person in 2016.
There are about 95,000 registered voters in Monroe County.
During the four hours of early in-person voting on Monday (Nov. 4), from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., 1,147 people cast a ballot. That’s a pace of almost 290 people an hour.
The daily voting tallies for the final four days of in-person early voting this year fell short of the daily totals logged in 2016. But the better numbers in the earlier part of the period were enough to put this year’s total far ahead of eight years ago. This year’s total was also helped by the fact there was one additional day’s worth of early in-person voting compared to 2016.
In Monroe County, the one place to vote early in person is in downtown Bloomington at the election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets, which is across the street from Bloomington Transit’s downtown center.
For most of the four hours of early voting on Monday, the queue stretched around the corner of the building westward along 3rd street at least to the back wall of the election operations building.
Towards the the end of the line, Andrea Martinie-Eiler had set up a table with donuts and a sign that read: “No matter who you vote for, remember to love your neighbor.”
The rule for early in-person voting is the same as for Election Day: When the clock ticks over to the time when the polls close, if you’re already in line, you still get to vote.
On Monday at noon, when the polls closed for the day, it was Monroe County election supervisor Kylie Farris who went out to the queue to define the end of the line. At the time, it wound around the corner to the back wall of the election operations building, about 40 voters strong.
Within 10 minutes, the end of the line, with Farris, had arrived at the entrance to the building.
Inside the same 10 minutes after the polls closed, a dozen people arrived intending to vote. The instruction they received from election workers was: You can still vote tomorrow, Nov. 5, but you have to go to your assigned polling location, which is assigned based on where you’re registered.
On Election Day, you can’t vote at any polling location you like. Find your proper polling station here: Indiana Voter Portal. Here’s another way to look up the same information, provided by the Monroe County GIS team: Monroe County voter information.
Through noon on Monday, the total number of advance votes this year—early in-person and mailed-in absentee ballots—stood at 35,091. In addition to the in-person early voters, that includes 4,466 people who requested that they be sent an absentee ballot and have returned it, as well as voters who voted by using the travel board.
In 2016, 30,985 people cast a ballot in advance, out of the total turnout of 59,847. Based on the relative proportion of advance voter turnout in 2016, the 35,091 advance voters this year would translate to about 67,780 voters this year, or about 71 percent of registered voters.
The B Square is benchmarking turnout for this year against 2016, because the COVID-19 pandemic impacted advance voter turnout patterns.
