Nearly 4,300 people in Tippecanoe County already voted in midterms
LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Midterm elections typically do not draw nearly the numbers of a general election – when a presidential race is decided – and if early voting is any indication, that's proving the case in Tippecanoe County.
Comparing voting totals between general elections and midterms is about as equal as "comparing apples and oranges," said Tippecanoe County Clerk Julie Roush.
At the first-week mark of early voting, 4,293 people had voted in Tippecanoe County as of noon Thursday. Three-fourths of those voters – 3,017 – took advantage of the opportunity by voting at the Tippecanoe County Office Building in downtown Lafayette, according to the County Clerk's website.
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The second-largest vote total came from those who visited the early voting site at the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds, 520 voters; 266 voted at Purdue's Mackay Arena, where the Boilermakers play basketball.
At nearly the same point in the November 2020 election – with then-President Donald Trump and the former Vice President Joe Biden vying for the top spot – Tippecanoe County reported a much more brisk turnout during early voting.
That's how different the vote totals can be in a general election compared to the midterms.
In that first week, the Journal & Courier reported Oct. 29, 2020, 42,672 ballots had been cast, according to Tippecanoe County elections office numbers, including 32,593 in-person voters and 10,079 mail-in ballots.
When comparing midterms, the 2022 turnout is already ahead of pace of 2018 numbers, Roush told the Journal & Courier Thursday.
Three times as many have voted at this point than during all of early voting in the November 2018, with still nine more days of early voting left.
"And we have received 1,223 mail-in ballots ‒ almost 2 1/2 times more mail-ins than the last midterm in 2018," Roush said.
The county clerk credits a number of key factors in the increase in early voting, midterm over midterm.
"I believe absentee mail-in requests have gone up for three reasons," Roush said. "During COVID people learned how to get an absentee ballot application, assisted living facilities encourage residents to vote absentee, and both major parties send out applications to their mailing lists, which accounts for a substantial amount of ABS requests."
Early voting for the Nov. 8 midterm election continues through Nov. 7 at locations listed on the county's Elections & Voter Registration website.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Nearly 4,400 people in Tippecanoe County already voted in midterms
