Election officials say more than 30,000 participated.
Frederick, Md (KM) If you noticed the polls were crowded during early voting in Frederick Count, it wasn’t your imagination. Election Director Stuart Harvey says 23,834 citizens participated in early voting between Thursday, October 25th and Thursday, November 1st.. That’s 13.78Z% of he county’s registered voters.
“In terms of Republicans, it was 8,328, which is 12.34%. Democrats it was 11, 688, which is 18.07%. And that’s the percentage of their total registration that actually turned out to vote,” says Harvey. “We had 26 members of Green Party, 99 members of the Libertarian Party and 3,662 people who were unaffiliated who also voted early.”
He says this is an increase compared to the number who voted during the last gubernatorial election in 2014. “Our number was considerably lower. It was 7.8% of our total registration. And the raw number was 10,713. So you can see how much it’s changed from four years ago,” Harvey says.
It appears there’s a lot of interest in this year’s general election.. “We had a high number of requests for absentee ballots. We’ve registered a number of new voters since the primary election. And certainly there was a very healthy turnout not just here in Frederick County, but throughout the state of Maryland as far as early voting was concerned,” says Harvey.
The general election is Tuesday, November 6th. Harvey says it’s important for anyone who wants to vote on that day to know where their polling places are located. If they don’t know, they can check their sample ballot, or contact the County Board of Elections. If they have questions while at the polls, ask for the chief judge.
The polls will be open from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
By Kevin McManus