Board of Elections more than 10,000 people cast ballots so far.
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Frederick, Md (KM) It’s appears this year’s gubernatorial election is generating a lot of interest. As of last weekend, 10,779 people in Frederick County took part in early voting. That represents 6.23% of the registered voters in the county which numbers more than 173,000, says Stuart Harvey, Election Director.
“I’m not surprised by the numbers partly because we have quite a few requests from absentee voters and that shows me there’s high voter interest,” he says. “We’ve also had quite a few people register to vote in the county since the primary election. So there were indicators that we might have a very high turnout,” he says.
Early voting began on Thursday, October 25th, and ends on Thursday, November 1st. General election day is Tuesday, November 6th.
Harvey says this year’s ballot is very long. Citizens will be voting on a Governor, State Comptroller and Attorney General. Locally, they’ll be picking from candidates for County Executive, County Council, Sheriff, Register of Wills, Clerk of the Court, State’s Attorney and members of the Board of Education. Residents will also decide two Maryland ballot questions and four Charter Amendments. In addition, voters will chose a US Senator and members of the House of Representatives from the 6th and the 8th Congressional Districts.
The first two days of early voting had agreeable weather, but it was rainy and windy on Saturday morning. Harvey says that doesn’t appear to have stopped people from coming to the polls. “Saturday morning, when it was raining and windy outside, I had as many people here in bad weather as I had when we opened with good weather on Friday,” says Harvey. “So I’m not sure if weather is an indicator here. It doesn’t seem to discourage people from voting.”
Four polling places are located at the Frederick Senior Center, 1440 Taney Avenue in Frederick; the Thurmont Regional Library, 76 East Moser Road, Thurmont; the Urbana Regional Library, 9020 Amelung Street, Urbana; and the Middletown Volunteer Fire Department Activities Building, 1 Fireman’s Lane, Middletown. The hours are from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM from now until Thursday, November 1st.
Citizens who want to participate should bring their voter registration cards if they’re already registered to vote. If not, they can sign up at any early voting center if they bring a form of identification such as a driver’s license, MVA ID card, or other documents such as deed or a bank statement. They will not be allowed to registered on the day of the general election, says Harvey.
“We expect that we will see a good turnout over the next four days,” says Harvey on Monday. “We would just encourage people, if they know they’re going to have a problem on election day, or they think the lines are going to be very long at their polling places because of high voter interest, then they should probably take advantage of early voting.”
He says the least busy times at the early voting polls are between 4:00 PM and 8:00 PM.
By Kevin McManus