DENVER — Four days out from the midterm election, more than a million Colorado voters have returned their ballots, according to the Secretary of State's Office.
As of 11:59 p.m. Thursday, election officials had received 1,099,847 ballots in early voting. That's a little less than 29% of all active voters in Colorado.
Breaking those ballots down by party registration:
- Unaffiliated: 409,232, or 37.21%
- Democrat: 357,656, or 32.52%
- Republican: 321,909, or 29.27%
- Other: 1,472, or 0.13%
> Video above: Longer ballots, longer count time on election night
That's fewer than the number of ballots returned at the same number of days out in the 2020 election, when more than 2,250,000 Coloradans had already voted; however, voter turnout is traditionally lower in years without a presidential election.
The counties with the most ballots returned so far were Jefferson (137,810), El Paso (123,621), Arapahoe (110,400), Denver (102,018) and Douglas (85,801).
Older voters were dominating the early turnout with more than half of the ballots returned coming from voters over the age of 55: 18.05% from those 75 and older, 34% from those 65-74, and 20.48% from those 55-64. Voters age 45-54 had returned 13.45% of ballots; ages 35-44, 11.05%; ages 25-34, 8%, and ages 18-24, 0.01%.
You can dig more into the data yourself at the Secretary of State's Office.
Election officials are asking voters to return their ballots before Election Day due to the length of the ballots and how long it will take to process them.
Because of statewide ballot issues, city issues, candidates and judges, voters in Denver will receive a ballot with three cards, front and back. That equals six pages of votes to cast. Denver has a high powered scanner, but it still takes time to count.
When voters turn their ballots in earlier, counties can verify the signatures and scan the ballots and have the results ready to learn at 7 p.m. on election night.
This story contains previous reporting by Marshall Zelinger.
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: Elections 2022