Early Voting: Voter turnout for voting early raises

The voter turnout for early voting across the country and in Johnson County is the largest in history.

With nine polling locations in Johnson County, in-person early voting has been open to residents and will be open Oct. 26-30 from 10-7 p.m. and Oct. 31 from 9-3 p.m.

Senior Claire McPhail voted in-person at Johnson County Department of Motor Vehicles on Oct. 19, just two days after turning 18, to cast her vote. According to McPhail, she was one of the only young adults there and waited in line about 45 minutes before placing her ballot.

McPhail felt safe through her experience Covid-wise due to the safety measures in place such as required masks and stickers placed six feet apart on the floor leading up to the voting booth.

Voting for the first time, McPhail thought that voting early was a nice way to take the pressure out of it.

“I think just a lot of people want to be able to just lock in their vote and not have to worry about waiting for the stress on the actual election day,” McPhail said. “It’s just a lot nicer to get it over with, and maybe you can see early data about what’s going to happen in the election.”

According to the U.S. Elections Project, while early voting has always been an option, the pandemic brought more light to it because more people were inclined to vote by mail as a safety precaution. As of Oct. 20, 77,466 votes had already been cast in Kansas and 37,372,827 ballots nationwide — already over a quarter of the number of overall votes cast in the 2016 election. Another trend regarding Democrats versus Republicans who voted early found that 52.7% of national early ballots came from Democrats and 25.3% came from Republicans, with the rest coming from either third party or undefined voters. In Kansas, 44.7% of early ballots were from Democrats and 42% from Republicans.

Orchestra teacher Adam Keda believes that this trend will continue after the pandemic since people are realizing the ease of voting early and by mail. Keda has been encouraging students to register to vote in past years and vote in this election.

“It’s a big historical election and I would love to see the [East] students who are able to be a part of that, and then in the future look back on it and be like, ‘Oh I voted in that election, it was a huge one,’ and to feel proud of that,” Keda said. “And then in turn encourage their kids and people in their families to go vote.”

Senior Ava Peters went with the mail-in option for her early voting ballot after turning 18 on Oct. 3. 

“It just kind of opened my eyes, like, I’m an adult now,” Peters said. “And I was so excited to be doing it because it’s really important to me, especially this year to do something about the election, or just vote in the election and have a say in what’s going on with our country. And even though it was just filling out a bubble, it meant a lot to me, and I was so excited.”

When voting by mail, ballots can be returned by mail, or hand-delivered to the election office or by polling locations. The ballots must be postmarked by the election date and received by the third day after the election, or by election night if the ballot is hand-delivered. 

While 70% of total votes cast so far have been made by adults over 50 according to NPR, East students are getting involved as well, and those who are eligible to vote are also making up this increased population of early voters. According to a poll of 122 on Harbinger’s instagram, 70% of eligible voters said they were planning to vote, and 63% said they were planning to vote early.

Peters hopes her age group, along with all others, will take advantage of the various options for voting in this election and make sure to exercise their right.

“[18-29 year-olds having the lowest voter turnout] is really surprising to me because I feel like you see young people who want to make a difference in the country the most,” Peters said. “I feel like it’s that age group that wants to change things, and how are you supposed to change things if you don’t go out and do something about it? I do think at least more in that age group will vote this year, because I feel like our age group is so passionate, and more so than other years about what’s going on in our government.”

With this path, many East students like Peters are hopeful that the trend will continue and voting turnouts will see record numbers of voters.

“I hope it’ll make the numbers of people who vote higher since the opportunity to vote is such a bigger timeframe with early voting,” Peters said. “It’s not like on Nov. 3, you can just forget one day and be like, ‘Oh well, it’s over,’ because there’s such a big timeframe to vote.”