ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
The line for early voting stretched out the door at Lynn City Hall on Thursday.
By ADAM SWIFT
LYNN — Early voting ended Friday, and the region’s city and town clerks are still catching their breath from the number of voters who took advantage of the initiative.
In Lynn, Mary Jules, the election coordinator, said City Hall was “absolutely buried” with early voters. It was common to see lines snake through City Hall during early voting. There was also early voting during the past several weeks at the Lynn Museum.
Massachusetts joined more than 30 other states voting early this year.
As of 11 a.m. on Friday, 6,736 ballots had been cast. That represents about 13 percent of the city’s registered voters hitting the polls before Election Day on Tuesday.
In the 2012 presidential election, Lynn saw a total turnout of just about 64 percent.
Even with the high number of voters, Jules said everything has gone smoothly with the city’s first attempt at early voting.
Turnout has been especially high in Swampscott since early voting began on Oct. 24.
“We are still entering the early voters in the state computer,” said Swampscott Town Clerk Susan Duplin late Thursday. “We’re having a hard time keeping up with them.”
“I can tell you we’ve had at least 3,000 early voters, which is a complete surprise to me,” said Duplin. “I figured 2,000 when all was said and done, but we have exceeded that. It has been steady the whole time.”
If the final numbers in Swampscott top 3,000, that means about 30 percent of the town’s 10,618 registered voters will have cast their ballots before Election Day. Total voter turnout in Swampscott for the 2012 presidential election was about 85 percent.
The chance to cast ballots early has been met with nothing but positive responses, Duplin said, with comments ranging from “this is great” and “thank you so much for staying open all these hours” to “glad that’s over with.”
Swampscott was one of 34 communities honored by the Massachusetts Election Modernization Coalition with a Gold Medal for its commitment to early voting. The award was handed to communities that offered one early voting site for every 35,000 people, at least two evenings of weeknight voting in each week in the early voting period, and six or more hours of weekend voting.
In Revere, City Clerk Ashley Melnik has seen close to 500 voters per day this week. As of late Thursday evening, nearly 3,000 votes had been cast, about 11 percent of the city’s registered voters.
Saugus saw 3,736 early votes, just under 20 percent of registered voters. In Nahant, there were 756 ballots cast as of Thursday night, or 28 percent of voters.
There were about 250 early voters per day in Lynnfield, according to Town Clerk Trudy Reid. Nearly a quarter of the town’s voters had cast ballots by Friday.
Despite the heavy turnout, Reid said there have been no issues.
“A few have asked about the storage of ballots until election day and once they hear my answer — they will be kept in the vault until Election Day — they seem assured,” she said. “We have tried very hard to accommodate everyone that has come in. At one point all our booths were being used.”
Adam Swift can be reached at aswift@itemlive.com.