30K Pierce County voters have returned ballots three days after receiving them

Pierce County residents are voting early.

As of Monday, the Pierce County Auditor’s Office has counted 37,306 ballots already turned in.

Of those, 32,196 ballots have been returned since they were mailed on Friday. The remaining 5,110 ballots were already in house, mainly from military voters who received ballots 45 days in advance. There are 585,000 registered voters in Pierce County.

The number of ballots returned so far is three times the number of ballots returned on the same day in the 2016 election, or about 12,600 ballots, according to Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson.

The Pierce County Auditor’s Office is estimating an 85 percent voter turnout for the Nov. 3 election.

Pierce County’s voter turnout in the last presidential election in 2016 was about 75 percent. Voter turnout was nearly 79 percent in the 2012 general election.

The auditor’s office collected and counted ballots from drop boxes and the mail on Monday.

“Business is brisk!” the auditor’s office shared on their Twitter account.

Anderson said most drop boxes have a 5,000 ballot capacity and are emptied regularly.

“We’re not concerned about overflow,” she said.

King County is also seeing ballots piling up after they were mailed to residents last Wednesday, according to the Seattle Times.

Ballots must be postmarked no later than Election Day or placed in a ballot drop box by 8 p.m. on Nov 3.

Cox Media Group