Joining a line of lunchtime voters at Hennepin County Elections in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Cady Mattson did a little dance as she dropped her ballot into the silver secrecy box. The 27-year-old said she fears chaos on Election Day and wanted to be sure her vote counts.
"For me it was really, really important to come and cast my ballot in person early just so I know that it's in and that it'll be counted," Mattson said.
Past predictions of youth voter mobilization have often fallen short. But although turnout among young voters has often been low, youth in Minnesota and throughout the country are voting early in record numbers this year.
Millions of people, and more than 5 million voters between the ages of 18 and 29, have already voted by mail or at early voting sites, according to the nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).
More than 132,000 early votes have been cast by Minnesotans between the ages 18 and 29, enough to make a difference in a close election. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton's margin of victory over Donald Trump in Minnesota was fewer than 45,000 votes.
By this point in 2016, fewer than 13,000 votes had been cast by young people in the state, according to the CIRCLE data.
While the numbers don't reflect voters' candidate choices, the data firm TargetSmart estimates that Democrats have cast more than half of early votes nationwide.
Sisay Shannon-Tamrat's mail-in ballot didn't make it on time when she tried to vote from college in Boston in the 2018 election, and she was determined to make sure that did not happen again. "The hassle of having to vote later on when everything's going to be super crowded scared me, so I'm voting now," she said.
