Nearly 300,000 Montanans have already voted in the 2024 election
One week from Election Day, more than a third of all registered Montana voters have already cast their ballots in the 2024 general election. Early voting numbers, updated by the Montana Secretary of State’s office every evening, show that voters have returned 284,327 absentee ballots to their local election offices, 54% of all absentee ballots issued.
Montana currently has 787,573 registered voters, a 4.6% increase over the 2020 general election and the highest number in state history, tracking with Montana’s population growth during the same period.
During the last presidential election cycle, Montanans cast 612,075 votes, the highest number of votes cast in the state’s history, with a voter turnout rate of 81.33%, a 30-year high according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office. While Montana allows any active voter to register for an absentee ballot to vote by mail, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 98% of Montanans opted to vote by mail. Just 9,497 individuals voted in person on Election Day.
The current number of absentee ballots received by election departments across the state makes up roughly 46% of the total ballots voted in 2020; however, only two-thirds of Montanans are registered absentee this year.
https://dailymontanan.com/2024/10/29/hundreds-of-thousands-of-montana-voters-have-already-cast-their-ballots-2024-election/