Early voting began Saturday in New York, and elections officials are expecting high turnouts.
Onondaga and Oneida counties reported record numbers for the first day of early voting Saturday.
In Onondaga County, more than 11,000 people cast ballots Saturday. That's compared around 5,000 that were cast on the first day of early voting in 2020.
Oneida County reported similar numbers. More than 4,000 voters there cast ballots Saturday. In 2020, just 1,500 ballots were cast on the first day of early voting.
Oswego County Democratic Elections Commissioner Matt Fleming said voters can expect the same kind of experience with early voting that they would on Election Day.
"We did early voting four years ago," Fleming said. "There was a very high turnout, and everything went very smoothly. We had almost no problems with voters or with technology or anything like that. So we don't we don't anticipate having any issues in the next week and a half. Anything that does come up, we're here and we're prepared to deal with."
Fleming said poll workers are coming in with a hardworking attitude to meet what is expected to be a high volume of voters.
"It's an all hands on deck and our poll workers appear to understand that, and everybody should be prepared to work," Fleming said. "We're staffing extra people for in our office here for early voting. We're, feeling very good about our staffing levels going into Election Day."
Fleming says election workers are prepared to make the voting process easy and secure.
"There's certainly been, more interest in and scrutiny on that, side of the operation in the last several years," Fleming said. "But we, you know, we're we're always happy to talk through the process with people and how it actually works, to make them feel more comfortable, with the security of our elections. And we do everything we can to operate within state and federal laws. Our machines are all tested — they're tested annually, and they're tested prior to every election."
