BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — In the first five days of the state's early voting period, nearly 60 percent of Massachusetts voters who were provided a ballot to vote early or to Vote by Mail have returned it.
According to Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin's office, 2,025,985 registered voters have applied to Vote by Mail or to vote early so far, with more than 68,000 applications arriving in the past 24 hours.
Of those requests, the state has provided 2,004,479 ballots to date. Galvin's office said 1,177,856 of those ballots have already been returned since early voting began Saturday morning, with around 176,000 ballots being returned since yesterday.
Of all registered voters, 25.2 percent have already voted. The number of ballots cast right now is equal to 34.9 percent of all ballots cast in the 2016 election.
"These numbers include both in-person and by-mail early voting numbers," said Galvin's office. "Our system captures each in-person early voter as one additional application received, one additional ballot mailed, and one additional ballot returned. We expect to be able to provide numbers segregated by method of return (by mail or in-person) beginning with tomorrow’s report."
Galvin's office said most local election officials scan in-person early voting activity after the close of each session, so these numbers generally reflect in-person ballots received through the end of day yesterday. Mail-in early ballots are generally scanned in upon receipt.
Early voting in Massachusetts started Saturday October 17th at 7 a.m. and runs through Friday October 30th.
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