In-person early voting starts in Monroe County for May 7 primary elections

Campaign signs on College Avenue on the west side of the lot where the election operations building stands. (April 9, 2024)

Campaign signs on College Avenue, looking north, on the west side of the lot where the election operations building stands. (April 9, 2024)

The demarcation of the 50-foot boundary, past which no campaigning is allowed, has been freshened up. (April 9, 2024)

Election operations at 3rd and Walnut streets.

The white board at Election Central says it all: 0 days until in-person early voting starts. (April 9, 2024)

At Election Central, supplies are ready to be picked up for use at different Election Day polling sites. (April 9, 2024)

In-person early voting for the May 7 primary election started in Monroe County at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, at the county’s election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets.

By noon, 26 people had cast their ballots, according to county election supervisor Kylie Moreland.

That’s a tiny fraction of the total number of registered voters in Monroe County, which as of noon stood at 91,161, according to Moreland.

The total number of registered voters will increase by the end of the day. That’s because a handful of people took advantage of the fact that the closure of county offices on Monday, due to the total solar eclipse, meant the deadline for registration was extended until noon Tuesday.

It is now too late to register in time to vote for the May 7 primary.

Also increasing the number of registered voters will be some paperwork that had previously been submitted, that will get processed on Tuesday.

The 26 people who cast ballots by noon on Tuesday might not sound like a lot. Still, it is almost twice as many as the 15 who voted on the whole first day of early in-person voting for the 2023 municipal primary election, according to Moreland.

Voters who want to preview their ballot can check the Indiana Voter Portal.  Some background on candidates, including links to their websites, can be found on the League of Women Voters Vote411 profiles.

For those who want to add the early voting schedule to their organization’s calendar, or to their personal calendar, this syndicated feed includes all the dates and times listed the table below: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/369d27c7a9322083baac00a06ca3b0479be0774c6f40c0ab7c86c0659426ef0b%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Starting April 9, for those who receive a text message from Katherine, Lauren (or others) at Public Policy Polling, about local Monroe County primary races, and wonder where it came from, that is a poll commissioned by The B Square.

Texts are being sent to a randomly sampled set of potential respondents.  Some smart phones might analyze the text message poll invitation as spam. Polling links retrieved from a spam folder should still work.

Photos: Early voting April 9, 2024