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Early voter turnout drops in Essex County

While many voters headed to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 2, more than 500 residents of Essex County had already voted, either by participating in early voting or by mailing in an absentee ballot.

This is the third year New York has had an early voting period. Election commissioners say the first year saw low numbers because it was just starting, the 2020 election was a high mark for early voting — it was a presidential election year, and voters may have been looking to avoid the crowds and the coronavirus.

Essex County saw a nearly 80% drop in early voting participation this year, compared to last year, according to data from the county Board of Elections.

Early voting participation dropped in Essex County this year, after the 2020 presidential election brought in a record number of early votes across the county and state.

Voter turnout typically rises during presidential election years, and last year’s hotly contested race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump brought in more than 3 million absentee and in-person early votes across the state, according to the Associated Press.

Last year’s early voting numbers remain the record high for Essex County — 2,520 people traveled to the Essex County Public Safety building in Lewis last year to cast their ballots during the nine-day early voting period, according to the Essex County Board of Elections.

Essex County added a second early voting station in Lake Placid this year at the Mirror Lake Beach House on Parkside Drive in Lake Placid. The other early voting station was moved to North Hudson, in the southern end of the county. Over the nine-day early voting period, 512 Essex County voters cast their ballots early. That’s a nearly 80% decrease from last year’s in-person early vote total.

A total of 508 absentee ballots had been returned to the Board of Elections as of Monday, bringing the county’s total number of people who voted before Election Day to 1,020. There are 27,287 registered voters in Essex County, and 25,152 of those are considered “active” voters.

This year’s early voting period attracted more voters to the polls than in 2019, the first year of early voting in the state, when fewer than 300 people cast early votes.

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