Monroe County officials report strong early turnout; GIS demo shows live dashboard

Monroe County election staff reported stronger-than-usual early-voting activity and demonstrated tools the county will use to track turnout heading into the May 5 primary.

Election Supervisor reported the county has 90,180 registered voters and, during the meeting, said early-voting check-ins stood at 430 (live vendor feed). She said 603 mail ballots have been sent with 86 returned and 57 email ballots sent with 8 returned. Staff also reported one provisional ballot had been cast during early voting.

"We are currently sitting at 90,180 registered voters in Monroe County," the election supervisor said. She described poll-worker parking arrangements and thanked staff for operating the early-voting sites smoothly.

John Baden, the county GIS coordinator, demonstrated a mobile-ready early-voting dashboard developed with Voter Reg that shows total early votes, daily totals, a countdown to the election and a voter-central address lookup that displays a voter’s polling location and elected officials. Baden said his dashboard had been updated as of the previous evening and showed 339 early votes for 2026; staff explained the difference between the figures as a matter of "active" versus "pending" registration flags and agreed to update the dashboard nightly to reconcile counts.

"This has been updated as of last night... we'll be doing this up until the election on May 5," Baden said. The clerk and other staff emphasized there had been no reports of voter suppression or disenfranchisement and encouraged residents to vote early.

The board will continue nightly updates to the dashboard and coordinate reporting between voter registration, the clerk's office and the GIS division for live election-night reporting.