Absentee ballots now coming in strong

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie announced today that absentee balloting for tomorrow's primary is already at the highest level in two decades.

As of this morning, election officials statewide reported that they had accepted 26,211 absentee ballots. That's a big turnaround from a week ago, when Ritchie told MPR News that he had not yet seen an increase in absentee voting.

His office released these primary absentee ballot statistics:

2010: 26,211 (as of 9:45 a.m. on 8/9/10)

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2008: 21,160

2006: 19,859

2004: 18,958

2002: 18,850

2000: 21,749

1998: 25,257

1996: 20,450

1994: 22,764

1992: 18,990

1990: 17,048