Mike Wolanin | The Republic People wait in line on the first day of early voting at the vote center inside Donner Center in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024.
Early in-person voting for the Nov. 5 presidential election got off to a fast start on Tuesday morning, with nearly 400 people casting ballots in a little more than 3.5 hours.
A total of 378 people had voted at Donner Center, 739 22nd St., as of 11:40 a.m., according to Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz. By comparison, a total of 264 people voted during the first entire day of early in-person voting during the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s off to a robust start, and it’s really going well, ” Lentz said. “…Just a steady stream (of voters) all morning. It has just been going really well.”
Lentz said election workers set up 10 voting machines at Donner Center to accommodate voters. Initially, Lentz had planned to have eight voting machines.
County election officials and local party chairs have said they are anticipating high turnout for this year’s presidential election.
In the 2020 presidential election, 36,674 Bartholomew County residents cast ballots, or nearly 69% of registered voters — the highest turnout for a presidential election in the county in 28 years, when Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot were on the ballot.
Lentz said her office has received a large number of phone calls about voting and that several people popped into the poll worker training at Donner Center on Monday in hopes of voting.
“We had a lot of people calling yesterday and were anxious,” Lentz said. “We had people stopping by when we were doing our poll worker training at Donner Center. …We had probably 10 to 12 stop by during that time frame wanting to vote yesterday.”
At the same time, local voters continue to request absentee-by-mail ballots at a faster pace than in 2016.
A total of 1,657 Bartholomew County voters had requested an absentee-by-mail ballot as of the most recent figures available Tuesday morning, according to county records. By comparison, 750 absentee-by-mail ballots were requested at the same point in the 2016 election.
As of the end of the day Monday, 484 absentee-by-mail ballots had been returned to county election officials.
Local election officials have said the 2016 election may be a more appropriate point of comparison for absentee-by-mail voting than the 2020 election, as fears of catching COVID-19 at the polls drove an unprecedented number of local residents to request absentee-by-mail ballots then.
A total of 4,383 absentee-by-mail ballots were sent out on just the first day allowed under state law in the 2020 election.
Early in-person voting for the Nov. 5 presidential election will continue at Donner Center weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. until Monday, Nov. 4 at noon.
Early in-person voting will also be held the two Saturdays before Election Day — Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 — from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Donner Center and the Bartholomew County Government Office Building, 440 Third St.
