Election 2020: Maryland Voters Show Up Early, Cast 2.1M Ballots

Washington DC

03 November, 2020

3:01 PM

Description

MARYLAND – Even before voters across the state ventured out to their local polling places to cast their ballots Tuesday morning, state elections officials had announced that voters are turning out in record numbers. According to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project which is being run by University of Florida Professor Michael McDonald, more than 2.1 million voters across Maryland had already cast their ballot as of Monday. Statistics compiled by the New York Times show that the number of people who have cast their ballots early across the state is 78 percent higher than in 2016, when 1.63 million voters requested absentee ballots, according to data, and when the state set an all-time, single-day record for early voting with more than 143,000. According to reports, Monday's totals of voters who had cast ballots ahead of Election Day was heavily dominated by Democrats, of which more than 1.3 million (60.3 percent of registered Democrats) had voted early. Meanwhile, data shows that 511,220 Republicans voted early (23.5 percent) while more than 345,300 voters with no registered party affiliation had cast ballots. The Baltimore Sun reported on Monday that many Maryland residents chose to cast their votes early as a way to avoid possibly lengthy lines at polling places around the state on Tuesday. According to reports, of the more than 2 million people who had voted early, more than 1.2 million had done so through mail-in ballots. The early voting slowed significantly after a record-setting Opening Day on Oct. 26 when just more than 161,000 people turned out for the first day of early voting, according to the Sun. The turnout compares to the state's previous record for single-day voting in 2016, when 143,623 people showed up, according to reports. McDonald, the University of Florida professor, told reporters that the early turnout in Maryland mirrored what is happening across the United States, where a record number of voters joined the trend of casting early ballots. "That's something we've seen pretty much in every state on the first day of early voting," McDonald, said. "We're getting long lines and upwards of twice the number of people voting than did, say, in 2016. We're seeing record numbers across the country." By Saturday, state elections officials announced that only 59,128 showed up to vote in person - three days ahead of when polls opened on Election Day. However, because of the high number of mail-in ballots that have been cast across the state, Maryland elections officials are not expected to have totals tallied by the end of Tuesday, The New York Times reported.