ANOKA COUNTY, Minn. — Minnesota cities extended early voting hours so more people could cast their ballot early.
Anoka County Elections Director Tom Hunt said there’s a lot of excitement around this election.
“In-person absentee voting is just off the charts,” he said. “This year both parties have really been making a push to get people into vote early.”
He said the county’s city and town halls are busier than the county government center.
“We’ve seen lines like crazy at all of our city and town halls,” he said. “We just passed 71,000 absentee voters, so I think for us that’s a little over 30%,” he said.
Trevor and Michala Voss voted at Blaine City Hall.
“We wanted to come out and vote early because we both work and it’s a good day to get it done, get through the line before it gets too crazy on Tuesday and make sure our voices are heard,” Michala said. “Especially, as a pregnant woman with a daughter, it’s important for us to show that we can vote and our voices matter.”
They decided to bring their young daughter to show her how the election process works.
“She loved it. I thought it was really cool that she got to see it in person because she’s seen it in cartoons on her Daniel Tiger episodes and now she got to see what the process looked like in person,” Michala said.
Trevor said the show teaches kids how to vote. For example, in one episode the class had to decide if they wanted a swing or a slide, so they voted.
Now, their daughter wants to cast her own ballot.
“She sat on his lap while he voted and wanted to put her own votes in but she’s a little too young,” Michala said.
“That was a little challenging but not terrible,” Trevor said.
They both said voting early was easy and they didn’t mind the wait. They said it took about 20 minutes for them to vote.
“Nobody wants to wait especially on a weekend, those weekend days our precious but they understand, and they know how important it is and they’re absolutely willing to do it,” said Blaine City Clerk Cathy Sorensen. “It’s about a 30-to-40-minute wait. We’ve calculated yesterday at our peak we were probably processing a voter every three minutes.”
Sorensen said they’ve had over 7,300 early voters come through city hall. She said they’re processing almost 1,000 ballots a day.
“Right now, we’re about 18% of our total registered voters and that’s right now and we haven’t obviously done a tally or our mailed in ballots, we haven’t finished up today and of course tomorrow which is going to be our busiest,” Sorensen said.
She said they have been so busy her election judges barely have time to take a break.
“Last two weeks they really haven’t even taken a lunch,” she said.
She said all of her election judges are committed to helping as many people vote early as they can and choose to eat when they can.
Sorensen has been the city’s clerk for a decade, and she hasn’t seen so many people vote early in an election.
“I think it just means people are taking advantage of all the different ways you can vote whether it’s on Election Day, or early, they have lots of options and that’s great and it’s how it should be,” Sorensen said.
She said she anticipates Monday being their busiest early voting day and plans to have extra staff on hand to help keep the line moving.