A record number of Vermont voters cast ballots in last Tuesday’s midterm.
In a ceremony on Tuesday at the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office in Montpelier, it was announced that 278,230 ballots were cast in the state, the official number from the election canvass supervised by Secretary of State Jim Condos.
Condos said this year’s total is a record for most votes cast in a Vermont midterm, but not the record for the highest turnout percentage because this year there were more eligible voters.
A record 92.5 percent of eligible voters were registered to vote in the election, in large part because of the state’s newly implemented automatic registration system — which began in 2015.
As of last week, there were 490,074 registered voters — that means last Tuesday’s turnout was 56.7 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Even though more Vermonters cast ballots in this midterm than ever before, the turnout — the percentage of eligible voters who came to the polls — was not the highest it’s ever been.
According to data reported by the secretary of state, the previous record for people voting in a midterm was in 2006, when 262,568 Vermonters came out to vote. Even though fewer voters cast ballots in 2006 than this year, the turnout percentage in 2006 was higher — 60.5 — because there were fewer registered voters.
In the last midterm, 2014, there were 439,782 registered voters and 196,086 voters cast ballots.
Early voting had also been higher this year than in previous midterm years. The day before the election, 69,180 early and absentee ballots had been requested, according to Secretary of State’s Office data.
It had been projected that Election Day voter registration also would be higher than the 1,358 people who registered on this year’s primary day.
Though the final tally of same-day voter registration will not be official for another 60 days, Condos said the preliminary number is around 4,000, with 2,100 from Burlington, which has a large student population.
As the canvass continues throughout Tuesday, Condos said there is the possibility of a recount for the Addison County state’s attorney race.
The race is between incumbent Democrat Dennis Wygmans and independent Peter Bevere, of Middlebury.
Wygmans currently has 44.45 percent of the vote, while Bevere has 44.39 percent of the total 17,554 cast ballots. Wygmans is ahead by 10 votes, 7,803-7,793.
In Vermont, candidates for state representative, state senate and county offices can petition for recounts if the difference between a winning candidate and a losing candidate is less than 2 percent.