RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — With just weeks remaining until election day, voters aren’t waiting to cast their ballots. Richmond’s Voter Registration Office is seeing a high turnout for early voting.
According to General Registrar Keith Balmer, 1,500 people have come out to cast their ballot for the upcoming election so far. Over 70% of those voters are 55 and older.
Many Virginians are voting early because of their engagement with the election. Early voting is six weeks long in Virginia and one of the longest early voting periods in the nation. Balmer told 8News that the Richmond City Voter Registration Office has experienced a few minor issues with early voting since it started.
“So far there have been just some minor issues here in the city. Our absentee voters received ballots without a prepaid postage stamp [on them] but we rectified that issue pretty quickly and just this week we discovered that there were some network issues that caused a backlog of voter registration applications for people who submitted their applications through the DMV between May and September,” Balmer said. “My staff is working overtime to process those applications so that my people can get the information they need to vote during this election.”
Anyone still looking to vote early still has plenty of time to. Early voting ends Saturday, Nov. 5.
