Erie County residents turn out for last day of early voting

KENMORE, N.Y. (WIVB) — Sunday marked the final day of early voting and residents stood in line at the Kenmore-Tonawanda Municipal Building on Delaware Avenue to cast their ballots.

Over 130,000 people across Erie County have voted early ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election.

“It’s the most important election since I can remember since so many things are on the line,” said voter Andrew Fuhri. “It is cool to see everyone voting regardless of who they’re voting for, but it seems super important.”

Another voter, Camille Plewa, said this election will be the biggest one of her lifetime.

“I do feel like the status of our country and moving forward is on the line,” she said.

University at Buffalo political science professor Shawn Donahue said voters are passionate, which is what’s driving them to the polls.

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“It does seem people are pretty motivated to vote this year. It could point to a large voter turnout this year,” he said. “People are pretty engaged if you look at polling, we’ll just have to wait and see if it favors one side or the other.”

Donahue said in previous years, more Democrats voted early while many Republicans waited to vote until Election Day. This year, he said there’s more of a mixture.

“One of the things that we’ve seen, at least in this election — Democrats and Republicans are utilizing it considerably,” Donahue said.

He said this could be the case because more politicians are pushing voters to get out to the polls early.

“They [Republicans] have really tried to push their voters to vote early. You aren’t having the thought that, ‘I should only vote on Election Day.’ You have this other option,” Donahue said. “I think that given that people have more of an opportunity, given there’s a lot more early voting sites, it’s probably helped lead to more early voting.”

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Sarah Minkewicz is an Emmy-nominated reporter and Buffalo native who has been a part of the News 4 team since 2019. Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahMinkewicz and click here to see more of her work.

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