Timothy Albritton casts his ballot on Oct. 6, 2020 in the basement of the Johnson County courthouse.
In the next two weeks voters across Johnson County have many opportunities to vote early before May 3 primary election.
Thus far, early votes have largely been submitted via mail-in ballots. County residents have requested 1,381 paper ballots.
As of Wednesday 549 voters had voted in-person at the Johnson County Clerk’s Office, said Trena McLaughlin, Johnson County clerk.
“I don’t know if people are (voting by mail) because we did so many paper ballots in 2020, or because people just like voting by mail,” she said.
She expects early in-person figures to increase significantly as more satellite locations open across the county.
The ever-popular Saturday early voting is available for the next two weekends at five vote centers across the county.
Starting Saturday and continuing Monday through April 30, voting will be held at the White River Public Library, Greenwood Public Library and Trafalgar Public Library, as well as the John R. Drybread Community Center in Edinburgh. Two retirement communities, Greenwood Village South Retirement Community and Otterbein SeniorLife Community will also hold voting for residents early next week.
“Our satellites will be open and we’ll have voting at the courthouse this Saturday. Hopefully we’ll see more people turn up,” McLaughlin said. “I’m anticipating once we get to Election Day, and we have some of our satellites at two retirement communities Monday and Tuesday, I anticipate turnout there.”
Thus far, Tuesday had the most people, 64, turn out for voting, but the average day has yielded about 45 people.
For comparison the last non-presidential primary in 2018 saw 18,537 turn out to vote on Election Day, while 4,054 people voted early in-person and 590 people voted by mail.
Though the number of mail-in ballots have exceeded total from 2018, McLaughlin said she expects the overall voting total to be less than it was four years ago.
“In 2018, we had a (contested) sheriff’s race and I think it brought a lot of people out,” she said. “I definitely think it will be lower than in 2018.”
