Many voters favor mail-in ballots, early voting amid brisk turnout at the polls

By Cynthia Prairie and
Shawn Cunningham
©2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Turnout was brisk on this warm and breezy Election Day, in which Americans were choosing a new president and Vermonters were deciding on their gubernatorial and State House seats. Mail-in ballots at times rivaled or surpassed in-person voting in many of our south-central Vermont towns.

And no Town Clerk who we interviewed reported any conflicts at the polls, a concern that many have had in this very contentious and divided political climate.

While mail-in ballots — a type of absentee ballot — have been beneficial for voters for their convenience and options of mailing them in or dropping them off on or before Election Day, they can be troublesome for the staff of the Town Clerk, who must check in each envelope before opening and feeding them into the tabulating machine. “Mail-in ballots create a lot more work,”  Chester Town Clerk Deborah Aldrich said shortly before noon.

One problem, she said, is the fold in these card-stock paper ballots, which makes it difficult to slide it through the electronic tabulator, which reads the ballots. At times, the ballots have to be read manually.

Public health during the Covid pandemic was the big factor in 2020 when the state adopted universal mail-in ballots and sent to the entire electorate ballots.  That year, Aldrich said, 1,200 came in. In 2022, for the midterms, that number dropped to 767.

And this year it went up to about 970.  While voters were coming into Chester Town Hall up til 7 p.m. Tuesday to register and vote, the last figure for the number of registered voters in the town was 2,496.

Cavendish, with 1,114 registered voters, saw more than half — 605 of them — voting by 1:30 p.m. with 343 having already voted early or by mail-in ballot. Town Clerk Diane McNamara said the polls were busy early in the day but then slowed. She also said they experienced no problems except for a prospective voter whose issues prompted McNamara o call the Secretary of State for advice.

Weston, with 557 registered voters, received 314 mail-in ballots, which poll workers were putting through the tabulator shortly after 2 p.m.

Town Clerk Kim Seymour said the flow of voters into the Town Office had been steady, with about 400 ballots processed thus far. She added that there had been no issues, no “rabble rousers” and in fact “somebody brought us roses. That’s the kind of place we live in.” She said the poll workers also received a lot of “thank yous.”

South along the West River, in Londonderry Town Clerk, Alison Marino said that at the end of the day Monday, the town had received about 700 mail-in ballots, amounting to about half of the 1,400-voter checklist. By mid-afternoon, the total number of in-person voters was 945. Marino suggested that the relative lack of in-person voters likely prevented the personal interactions that could have been problematic.

Heading east over the hill in Andover, Town Clerk Jeanette Haight said it was “super busy” between 8 and 9 a.m., with eight voters patiently waiting when voting opened. By mid-afternoon, in-person voting had slowed down considerably.

While nearly 318 of the town’s 413 registered voters had voted (200 by early voting), Haight did not think this year would beat the record turnout of 2020 when 368 voted from a voter list of 447. She noted that the decline in the checklist was due to several factors including house sales to non-residents and the lack of long-term rentals available in town.

Haight said there were no problems and in fact, like Weston, people were very kind to the poll workers including one resident who sent homebaked scones, still warm from the oven.

In Grafton, Town Clerk Kim Record said that voting had been steady and without incident, with poll workers receiving cookies and plenty of thank yous from voters.

Of the town’s 589 registered voters — including four who had registered earlier in the day — a total 353 people had voted by mid-afternoon, including the 251 mail-in ballots.