Welcome back to the #weeklywonk.  This is my weekly article on election statistics and related topics. These articles give insight in the data and statistics that make up our home, Onondaga County and New York State.  Each week I investigate a different election event or political subdivision that can give us clues into our rich and diverse electoral tapestry.  This week I start my 2-week investigation into the recent 2024 June Federal and local primary.  This week I investigate the voter behavior around the methods of alternative voting:  Early Voting, Vote BY Mail, and Affidavit balloting.

Ever since Early Voting was initiated in 2019 it has been seen through a partisan lens.  Democrats have focused campaigns and outreach around this new tool while the GOP sought to minimize its use and question its legitimacy.  This resulted in usage rates for Democrats outperforming their enrollment and the GOP lagging.  The 2024 June Primary was no different.  There were 3873 voters who Early voted and 94% of them were Democrats (3,626) while the GOP had just 6% (251).  There was only 1 singular conservative voter. Because of the lower population eligible to vote (Approximately 141k voters) we only opened 6 Early Voting spots, however that was still more than the minimum of 4 required by election law (1 for every full allotment of 30k eligible voters).  First was the Dewitt Town Hall with 1247 voters (32%), followed by Clay Town Hall (4841 21%), Camillus Fire Department (815 21%), Armond Magnarelli (405 10%), Beauchamp Library (330 9%), and last is Lafayette Fire Station (241 8%).

Early Voting in primaries, like turnout in general is very low usage. However, the 2024 June primary was busy relatively speaking.  The 3828 voters were the second highest raw voter volume, just behind the 4154 in the August 2022 primary.  The August 2022 congressional primary was the closest primary in terms of activity to compare the June 2024 primary too, but not an exact match.  There were more eligible voters in the August 2022 as the GOP and Democrats had choices countywide as opposed to just Democrats having countywide and GOP having only 40% of their voters eligible.  Thus 17.33% of the votes that were cast in the 2024 June primary were cast as Early Voters.  This is the highest percentage of any primary held since Early Voting was instituted in 2019 and an indication that Early Voting continues tog row with time as an option.

Unfortunately, the partisan trends are not as promising.  The reason the 2024 June primary election was so successful is the overwhelming usage and adoption by Democrats.  Some of this disparity was because Democrats had a county wide congressional primary with over 115k eligible voters, and the GOP had only a primary in SD 48 with just 35k eligible voters. Thus, looking at the percentages is helpful.18.78% of the Democrats who cast a vote and 3.13% of the voting eligible population chose to Early Vote.  The GOP however only had 8.22% of those who chose to vote and just 0.71% of the voting eligible population cast Early Votes.  In this primary it was Democrats driving the growth in Early Voting.

When diving into the polling location performance over the years during primaries we see a pattern emerging over the 9 different locations used.  Different sites are open during different primaries, so it is hard to get a real sense of performance.  However, the busiest site is always Dewitt Town Hall.  This is followed by Clay Town Hall and Camillus Fire station.  Armond Magnarelli leads the third tier of sites along with OCC and Lysander when used.  Lafayette Fire station and Beauchamp Library usually fall into the last tier along with SW Community center when used.  The North Syracuse Community Center has never been used in a primary election due to programming at their facility.

Vote by Mail voting includes three different types of ballots, Absentee, Early Vote by Mail, and inspector Ballots.  We issued a total of 4864 Vote by Mail Ballots for the June 2024 primary.  2300 ballots (47%) were successfully cast.  2369 ballots (49%) were not returned to the Board of Elections by the voters. 139 Ballots (3%) were returned to the Board of Elections undeliverable.  56 ballots were returned but ruled invalid (1%). Much like Early Voting Democrats dominated the returned ballots with 1965 ballots to the GOP 320 ballots.  Of the 56 ballots ruled invalid, 27 ballots (48%) were not postmarked timely, 20 ballots (36%) had technical difficulties and did not return their cure, 4 ballots (7%) were returned, and the voter passed away before counting it, 2 had non curable technical issues, 2 Ballots returned unvoted, and 1 ballot was returned and a voter requested it not be cast.

As stated, before primaries are low turnout affairs and that is reflected in the ballots returned as well.  A large amount of the Vote by Mail population are permanent absentees that get ballots mailed to them every election. Despite postage paid returns if there is not an interest in voting in the election the ballots will not be returned.  We can see that specially so in primaries. Mail balloting has seen a decrease in usage rates since the pandemic.  It is hoped that the new Early Vote by Mail option will improve that.  The 10.28% usage rate is slightly higher than other primaries which have been coming in at about 9% since the unofficial end of the pandemic in 2022.  The exception of course was the ultra-low turnout Presidential primary earlier this year that had 21.69% vote cast by mail.

The last alternative method of voting is Affidavit balloting.  These are ballots that are cast by voters in person that cannot be counted immediately. There were 130 affidavits turned in during the 2024 June primary.  102 were filled out by Democrats, 10 by the GOP, 1 by Conservatives, and 17 by other parties.  101 (78%) were ruled valid and 29 (22%) were ruled invalid. Of the invalid affidavit 19 (66%) were voters enrolled in the wrong party as New York is a closed primary state.    6 Affidavits (21%) voted by mail before turning in affidavits, 3 voters (1%) were not registered.  1 voter (3%) had technical reasons for not being ruled valid.

That is, it for this edition of the #weeklyWonk. Next week I will conclude my investigation of the June 2024 primary by looking into Election Day voting and Overall turnout.  After next week the focus of this column will be on the political subdivisions holding competitive elections for the fall general election. Subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates.