The 2024 Election in Dutchess County: What You Need to Know
By Jake Harris
The 2020 Election was unprecedented. The COVID-19 pandemic led to mass absentee ballot voting, which led to a very different process and timetable for determining a winner. This year, things sort of return to the way they were, but that doesn’t necessarily make things easier. Immense preparation still must go towards the statewide effort of a free and fair election.
Dutchess County, for the last few elections, has been a swing county despite remaining Democratic, regularly swinging on the pendulum of the political spectrum. In 2012 the county went in a fairly comfortable margin towards Barack Obama. Dutchess followed much of the swing states and counties four years later, narrowing to almost a dead heat between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The electoral pendulum once again took a noticeable swing back six points in favor of the Democrats as Joe Biden took the county once again in 2020, this time by a much more comfortable margin than Clinton in 2016.
The County has a significant rural/urban divide. Much of Dutchess County is in the suburbs or rural areas, and these areas tend to be significantly more likely to vote Republican. Poughkeepsie, as a county seat and a source of a significant number of New York City commuters, votes heavily in favor of Democrats. Poughkeepsie voted 75 percent in favor of Joe Biden, compared to the county total of 54 percent.
On November 5, 2024, things will be different, as with every election. Hannah Black, commissioner of the Dutchess County Board of Elections, shared some of the changes voters can expect in 2024 when voting in the county. “Like before we will have early voting nine days before the election, we have not decided on the exact hours yet but voters can expect to see eight total early voting locations rather than four this time”.
Black explained the different reasons for this: “We are not going to have people waiting as much in hour-long lines. People will be able to go across the county to vote in various locations.”
The timetable for correcting signatures has been extended in 2024, giving voters whose signatures don’t match their driver's license two weeks to correct them. “Voters from the primary have until April 19th to correct their ballot signatures. We currently have 11 absentee ballots going through this process,” said Black.
Security continues to be a top priority for Dutchess election officials with poll worker safety being a top priority. “We have a protocol for the threatening of the safety of employees, I don’t want to go into full detail of it but there is always a connection and assessment of threats with law enforcement local and federal. We secure any site that could be a safety threat before it becomes one”.
These concerns come after a wave of threats made in the 2020 election cycle towards Fulton County, Georgia, poll workers following Donald Trump's electoral defeat. In the state, poll worker safety remains a national issue that the nation will confront after the most unprecedented attacks against electoral integrity in US history.
