Early voter turnout far exceeds Election Day total

Votes were apparently cast early and often in Putnam County this election season.

As the early vote total exceeded 10,000 in recent days, it became apparent that, for the first time in county history, more votes were likely to be cast before Election Day than on the day itself.

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

Between paper absentee ballots and early in-person voting, 10,512 votes were cast before the first vote center opened at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

Once the centers closed 12 hours later, another 6,236 had voted, bringing the total number of ballots cast in Putnam County to 16,748, or 67 percent of the county’s 24,835 registered voters.

That’s a significant increase from the 60-percent mark the county had hovered around for the last three presidential election years.

“I’m so proud of the voters coming out the way they did,” County Clerk Heather Gilbert said of the turnout. “I kind of thought we’d have even more, but I’m happy with 67 percent.”

For the sake of comparison, voter turnout was 61 percent in 2008, 59 percent in 2012 and 60 percent in 2016.

The real difference this year, though, was the early vote. Driven by COVID-19 concerns and changing attitudes about absentee voting, 8,621 cast early in-person ballots at the Putnam County Courthouse and another 1,891 cast mail-in (paper) ballots.

Combined, they made up 63 percent of the votes cast, well beyond the record of 28 percent set four years ago.

Among the Election Day votes, the vote centers in Bainbridge, Cloverdale and Heritage Lake ran well ahead of polling places:

• Bainbridge Community Center: 1,305 ballots

• Cloverdale American Legion: 1,113

• Floyd Township Fire Department: 808

• Greencastle American Legion: 575

• Putnam County Courthouse: 653

• Putnam County Fairgrounds: 608

• Reelsville Fire Department: 674

• Wellspring Christian Church: 506

Gilbert said she was pleased with her poll workers, which had an unprecedented number of new workers, including four new inspectors.

“I’m so proud of my poll workers,” Gilbert said.

She said the turnover was driven in large part by COVID-19.

“Historically, a lot of our poll workers are elderly,” Gilbert said. “With COVID, we had to keep them safe.”

Even with the new workers — including an entirely new crew at one site — Gilbert said Election Day was “surprisingly quiet” with few issues with voting machines or voters.