(ABC 6 News) – Barely two weeks out from Election Day, Olmsted County is seeing voters turn out by the hundreds for direct balloting.

Direct balloting has been open since Friday, and officials with the county say the turnout is easily some of the biggest they’ve seen in recent history.

In fact, this year is shaping up to be the busiest for absentee voting on record, excluding the 2020 election.

“Our numbers of in person voting have spiked quite significantly,” said Luke Turner, associate director of property records and licensing for Olmsted. “We’re averaging over 750 a day, so it’s a very high number.”

Even with those high numbers, the county is still expecting and preparing for high turnout on Election Day.

At the current rate, about 20-30% of registered Olmsted voters will have already cast their ballots, leaving 70-80% of the county’s over 100,000 registered voters.

Rochester is in the final process of training its about 850 election judges, and planning bus routes for voters to use for free to access the 45 polling locations throughout the city.

“The idea is to kind of make those registered voters at each of those polling locations not exceed about 1500 people or thereabouts, so that there’s not significant lines, so that there’s not significant delays,” said Deputy City Clerk Christiaan Cartwright.

Cartwright says remaining voters will need to make a plan to ensure they’ll be able to cast their ballot in time, and all mail in ballots must be received by 8 P.M. on Election Day to be counted.