Absentee voting smashes local records

The number of absentee votes cast so far in Charlottesville and Albemarle County has already smashed the region’s previous record set in 2004.

“We’ve already broken the record,” Albemarle County General Registrar Jake Washburne said. “And we’re expecting a lot more to come in over the next week.”

As of Monday afternoon, Charlottesville had received 1,843 absentee ballots with eight days left before the Nov. 4 election.

Four years earlier, during the presidential race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, the city saw a total of 1,400 absentee ballots cast.

In Albemarle County, 3,724 absentee ballots had been cast as of Monday afternoon. In the 2004 race, the county had a total of 3,399 absentee votes.

“If we keep going at this clip, we’re going to far surpass what we saw in 2004,” Washburne said.

Localities across Virginia are reporting a similar boost in absentee voting. According to the State Board of Elections, 354,970 absentee ballot applications had been approved by Monday afternoon and 232,015 absentee votes had been cast. Four years ago, a total of 220,000 absentee votes were cast statewide.

All absentee ballots will be counted by Election Day. The deadline to cast an absentee ballot in person at the local voter registration office is Saturday at 5 p.m. The deadline to request an application to vote absentee by mail is at 5 p.m. today. Mailed ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Virginia’s surge in absentee voting reflects an elevated level of interest in the race between Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Virginia, which has not backed a Democrat for president since 1964, is widely considered to be one of the nation’s few battleground states.

Voters in the Charlotte-sville area can expect long lines at polling places during peak hours Nov. 4, election and government officials said.

“We anticipate pretty long lines this year,” said Maurice Jones, Charlottesville’s assistant city manager. “There’s no way to avoid that.”

Both the city and county have added additional poll workers and voting machines to help speed up the process. If voter turnout is anything like this year’s record-breaking number of new voter registrations, however, some polling places will inevitably be crowded.

For the first time this election, Charlottesville voters will have the choice of voting on one of the city’s electronic voting machines or on a paper ballot. By offering voters a choice, election workers said, the lines should move a bit quicker. Charlottesville’s Tonsler precinct, for example, previously had only four voting machines. Now, the precinct will have four voting machines and 12 privacy booths for paper ballot voting, said Rick Sincere, chairman of Charlottesville’s Electoral Board.

The city will also debut a new computerized voter check-in process that aims to let poll workers more efficiently process voters and will eliminate the traditional A-to-K and L-Z check-in lines. If a voter is at the wrong polling place, the new system will tell poll workers where the voter is supposed to cast a ballot.

Unlike some others elections, this year’s ballot is fairly straightforward. There are no constitutional amendment questions or a vast number of races. For Charlottesville-area voters, the only contests are for president, U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

“If we get the numbers that they’re projecting, it’s inevitable that it’s going to be crowded,” Washburne said. “We’re going to have to ask everybody to be as patient and understanding as they can.”