Camden County On Track Again To Have Highest Percentage Of Mail-In Ballots In State
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CAMDEN COUNTY, N.J. (CBS) -- The midterms are nearing as we are less than two weeks away. In last year's election, Camden County had the highest percentage of mail-in ballots of all counties in the state of New Jersey, and this year is on track to repeat another high turnout for votes by mail.
"I'm only doing early voting because I'm not going to be here for Election Day," said William Griffin, of Voorhees.
Griffin is one of at least 350 people physically voting in the election office in Gloucester.
The warehouse is attached to the election's office. It holds more than 800 voting machines that will go out towards 197 polling sites in the country. By this time next week, all of this equipment will be at the sites and ready to go.
Aside from physically voting early, elections staff have been busy handling mail.
For the second year in a row, Camden County is expected to have the largest vote-by-mail turnout in the state.
"This year we already had 30,000 voted. We have more voted this year than we actually mailed out last year and there's 13 days to go before Election Day," said Deputy County Clerk Christopher Morris.
It's a proactive approach taken throughout the year by sending preprinted, free-stamped vote-by-mail applications to all 350,000 registered voters in New Jersey, and for the non-voters, they assist with filling out voter registration and vote-by-mail forms.
Registered voters receive their ballots in the mail and then mail them back to the elections office.
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The county's motto is to engage many and make it easy.
"We call it the Camden County Court Road Show. We go anywhere and everywhere," said Camden County Clerk Joseph Ripa.
They went to the Premier Cadbury retirement home in Cherry Hill.
"I think it was very nice of them to do that because I wanted to vote and be a part of it, so I was happy," said Patricia Bearint.
Bearint hasn't voted in years.
"It feels good," said Morris. "It feels very good because these folks may not have a chance otherwise to cast their ballots. They just want to vote."
