23% of voters cast ballots ahead of election

GOSHEN — Roughly 23 percent of registered voters in Elkhart County opted to vote early this year, with the final votes being cast on Election Day amid periodic bouts of rain.

A total of 29,118 ballots were cast ahead of Election Day, according to Clerk of the Courts Chris Anderson. A third of those were counted in the last week before the noon deadline on Monday.

In-person voting was available weekdays in Elkhart and Goshen starting on Oct. 8, and in Middlebury and Nappanee on certain Saturdays. Wait times ranged from 40 minutes to two hours as voters kept the 10 ballot-marking machines at each location continuously busy, overseen by twice the usual number of poll workers.

Anderson said ahead of the election that he expected to see turnout exceed Elkhart County's 60 percent average for a general election. It's a smaller share of eligible voters than in many other Indiana counties.

The record for early turnout was set in 2020, when close to 12,000 votes were submitted by mail and over 33,000 cast absentee in-person. The number of ballots cast early during the COVID-19 pandemic exceeded the Election Day turnout of nearly 31,000.

Total turnout in 2020 was 60 percent of the nearly 126,000 registered voters in Elkhart County. During the 2016 presidential race, total turnout was 50 percent, with just over a quarter of those – 17,654 – cast absentee.

The number dropped to only 36 percent turnout in the 2022 general election.

Voters in recent weeks and finally on Tuesday were casting ballots in Elkhart County and across the country for candidates in a number of offices, including president, U.S. and Indiana Senate and House seats, county offices and school boards.