Election notebook: Monroe County early voting picks up pace, still way slower than presidential year
The historical pattern across the county is for midterm elections to generate less voter turnout than elections that are held in presidential years.
In Monroe County, Indiana, that’s the pattern for early in-person voting so far, after almost two week’s worth of early voting.
In 2020, for most days of the in-person early voting period, over 1,000 people stood in line to vote at the old Johnson’s Hardware building (aka Election Central) at 7th and Madison streets.
This year, though the first nine days of voting, the daily total has nudged past 500 just once—this week on Monday.
Early in-person voting in Monroe County this year has a new location—the election operations building at the corner of 3rd and Walnut streets. That’s across Walnut from the downtown transit center.
The trend is upward. At midday on Tuesday, election workers at the election operations building figured the end-of-day total would beat Monday’s which was 530. That depended a bit on the weather—cloudy overcast skies were threatening rain, but the heavens had not yet opened.
Through the first nine days of early voting this year, 3,533 have voted early in person in Monroe County That compares to 8,854 who voted early in person for the first nine days of early voting in 2020.
On weekdays, early in-person voting hours at 3rd and Walnut are from 8:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. The complete schedule of early voting hours is posted on the Monroe County election website.
