More than half of Bartholomew County voters cast ballots early for today’s presidential election, shattering the previous record set in 2016.
A total of 20,843 people voted early in-person at the former Carson’s store at FairOaks Mall, including 1,296 on Saturday and 680 in just four hours on Monday morning, said Bartholomew County Clerk Jay Phelps.
By comparison, 16,161 total votes were cast before Election Day in 2016, as well as 6,413 in 2012 and 6,357 in 2008, according to county records.
Additionally, 6,675 people have cast ballots through the mail, raising the overall total number of votes cast before Election Day to 27,518 or roughly 51% of registered voters in the county, Phelps said.
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Currently, only around 300 absentee-by-mail ballots had not yet been returned as of Monday afternoon.
“Isn’t that amazing?” Phelps said. “I wouldn’t have ever been able to predict this high of a turnout.”
Bartholomew County isn’t the only community seeing a higher-than-anticipated turnout so far.
Record numbers of American have turned out to vote early across the country, with more than 93 million ballots already cast, The Associated Press reported.
Most election experts think the United States will see 150 million to 160 million ballots cast in 2020, which would mean that more than half of likely voters have already cast ballots, according to wire reports.
As of this past Wednesday, more people already had cast ballots in this year’s presidential election than voted early or absentee in the 2016 race, according to the AP.
About 27% of votes nationally have been cast either by new or infrequent voters, according to an analysis published by The Associated Press on Saturday. Those are voters who have never voted before or voted in fewer than half of the elections in which they were eligible.
On Oct. 22, the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office said more than 1 million Hoosiers had requested an absentee ballot or voted early in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Locally, Phelps said he is feeling “great” about the turnout so far.
“That just speaks volumes about who we are as a community,” Phelps said.
