Early voting: Close race between District 2 and District 3
One of the points of pride at stake in Bloomington’s municipal elections this year is which city council district can produce a better turnout at the polls.
Through about 1 p.m. on Friday, early voting tallies made the race between District 2 and District 3 pretty much a dead heat: 113 for District 2 and 116 for District 3.
Election Central early voting, at 7th and Madison streets, continues Saturday (Nov. 2). Saturday hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
On Monday (Nov. 4) early voting continues from 8 a.m. to noon.
Election Day hours at precincts are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Voting precinct locations are posted on the Monroe County election board’s website.
No tallies are done for individual candidates until the polls close on Election Day.
Candidates are:
District 2
District 3
Based on the early voting numbers through midday on Friday, turnout for the election overall could be lighter even than usual. In 2015, the last time municipal elections were held in Bloomington, 202 early votes were cast in the District 2 city council race, out of 551 total votes. In District 3, 440 early votes were cast for the District 3 city council race, out of 1,539 total votes.
That year, Dorothy Granger’s District 2 city council race was uncontested. In District 3, Allison Chopra won against Nelson Shaffer.
Election Central early voting has been underway since Monday, a week ago. Early voting this year is being held for just two weeks instead of the usual four—a decision made by the county election board based on the limited number of contested races this year.
Elections are being held only in two districts, because the city council races in the other four districts are uncontested and there are no contested citywide races.
Based on the dataset provided to The Beacon in July, District 2 and District 3 each had around 8,000 registered voters.
