In what has felt like a mad dash to the 2024 General Election, thousands of Rhode Islanders have already made their voices heard through the state’s generous and straightforward early voting period — and that's a great thing for democracy.

There’s still time, too, to beat the rush on Election Day and submit your ballot on your own time, at your own availability.

Early voting continues on until the day before Election Day, Nov. 4. To see where and when you can go vote early, simply visit vote.sos.ri.gov and click on “Early Voting Information” among the buttons in the center of the page. From there, you can find your early voting location and their hours of operation.

Clearly, according to our own anecdotal experiences with voters who have exercised this right to vote early, and to the data coming out about early voting numbers, plenty of Rhode Islanders are finding the ease and availability of early voting to be a benefit.

According to the Secretary of State’s voting tracker, Warwick leads all Rhode Island municipalities in early voting with over 6,300 early voters as of press deadline. They additionally trail only Providence in the number of mail ballots received by the Board of Elections, with over 2,500 as of press-time (Providence voters have submitted 3,000 mail ballots, but only 4,100 voted early so far). This means nearly 9,000 Warwick residents have voiced their vote prior to Election Day, which is around 14% of the 62,865 registered voters.

Cranston takes the second spot for most early voting in the state with over 5,500 early votes and nearly 2,000 mail-in ballots cast as of press time, which amounts to around 13% of its 56,200 registered voters.

Johnston voters demonstrate a similar trend to Warwick and Cranston, with over 2,400 early voters and 762 mail-in votes as of press-time. That amounts to around 14% of their 22,492 registered voters.

All said, with more than a week of early voting remaining, nearly 112,000 Rhode Island- ers have exercised their right to vote through the early voting process. There are thou- sands more approved mail ballots that have yet to be received, and it wouldn’t be surpris- ing if a huge swath of Rhode Islanders take advantage of this last full week of early voting to boost the overall participation from early voting close to 25% (or greater) of the total voter turnout by the time all is said and done.

The proof is evident from these numbers that voters prefer having options for how to cast their ballots. This availability of early voting also reduces the burden on poll workers and elections officials on Election Day, as a significant number of people won’t be crowding polling locations since they’ve already been able to vote.

We applaud the Secretary of State and Board of Elections for encouraging a vibrant early voting culture in Rhode Island, and implore anyone who has not already taken the opportunity to cast their vote to consider doing so early.

At the very least, we implore all registered voters in Rhode Island to make it out to the polls on Election Day, to ensure they have a say in how the most important issues to them — the local ones — are carried out.