Ohio has set a record for early voting, the Secretary of State announced Tuesday.
“Our data team has been busy managing the number of early votes still coming in from counties, and today Ohio set a new statewide record for in-person early voting,” said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. I am very happy to be able to confirm this.” I wrote In a post on social platform X.
He added that 68 of the state's 88 counties exceeded the in-person case numbers they recorded earlier in 2020.
Approximately 1.54 million people voted early in Ohio this year. Overall, about 2.57 million early votes had been cast as of noon Tuesday, including about 1.03 million absentee ballots returned by mail. Approximately 120,000 absentee ballots are still outstanding. can be counted If they arrive at their respective county board of elections within four days of the election.
LaRose said he doesn't expect absentee voting by mail to surpass 2020 records because the pandemic forced many people to request absentee ballots. But he said he was optimistic about voters' confidence in early voting.
“It's always difficult to break mail-in voting records because of the 2020 pandemic, but Ohio voters are showing increasing confidence in early voting,” he said. “Vote turnout was strong today, so let's see what the final numbers say overall. Stay tuned.”
More than 82 million voters took advantage of early voting before Election Day began. This number is slightly more than half of the total turnout in the 2020 presidential election.Associated Press reported.
As of Monday evening,University of Florida Election Lab TrackerIt was revealed that more than 44 million in-person early votes were cast and more than 37 million votes were returned. More than 67 million mail-in ballots were requested, according to the data.
North Carolina and Georgia also set records for early voting.
