Election 2020: More than 12% have cast ballots in 9 days of Montgomery County early voting

Board of elections sees surge of poll worker volunteers.

Taking advantage of early in-person voting or voting by mail, at least 46,454 Montgomery County voters have cast their ballots for the November general election, election officials said Thursday morning.

That number represents more than 12% of Montgomery County’s 372,861 registered voters.

Montgomery County Board of Elections Director Jan Kelly said her office has been “consistently busy” with in-person voting, including curbside voting, since voting began on Oct. 6.

“It’s been a very smooth and good process,” she said. “And it’s about only a 20-minute process from car to the ballot scanning device.”

The office is averaging about 1,900 voters a day, Kelly said, and as of Wednesday night, 13,175 residents had voted in-person.

The number of absentee ballot requests continue to grow, reaching more than 115,000.

“So that’s about a third (of absentee ballots we’ve processed), which is great,” Kelly said. “So for those of you that still have your ballots out there, there’s (more than) 70,000 voters that have them: don’t delay, return them today.”

Meanwhile, Kelly said the board is still returning communications from a deluge of prospective poll workers. Montgomery County has the minimum number of election workers needed from both parties but continues to train and commit additional workers to compensate for any cancellations during an unprecedented election marked by a pandemic.

“Since the Secretary of State asked us to get 50% more (poll workers) and has been running a great campaign to ensure that, we’ve gotten so many interested individuals that we’re having trouble getting back to them and that’s new to us,” Kelly said.

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