Early Voting & Returned Absentees Across Maryland

Today, Seventh State expands its coverage of pre-Election Day voting to include returned absentee ballots as well as early voting. Yesterday was the biggest day so far for early voting as 91,480 voters across the state went to early voting centers.

At the end of the sixth day of early voting, 11.7% of registered Marylanders have participated in early voting. Today’s first graph shows the share in each county who had cast ballots early at the close of yesterday’s early voting. While almost 25% of voters in Talbotians have done their civic duty via early voting, under 5% of Alleganyites have done the same.

The share of registered voters who have returned absentee ballots is much smaller. As the following graph reveals, only 1.4% of Marylanders have returned absentee ballots.

Just 37.6% of absentee ballots mailed have been returned, so that figure will surely rise. Even if every single absentee ballot is returned, that would account for 3.6% of all registered voters – a much lower share than ballots cast via early voting.

Talbot is strong in absentees as well as early voting but Montgomery leads the class with 2.3% of registered voters having returned absentee ballots. Charles is the lowest with just 0.8% of registered voters having done the same.

Three of the four jurisdictions at the low end of people voting by absentee ballot are majority black or close to majority black (Prince George’s, Baltimore City and Charles). Heavily white Harford is the fourth county in this lowest group. There are also no heated executive races in these four counties.

The final graph shows the combination of early voters and absentees to give an overall sense of pre-election turnout. Overall, 13.0% of registered Marylanders have already cast ballots.

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