The number of Republican and Democratic county voters registered for the April 23 primary is likely at an all-time high, and the county election bureau is hoping for at least half turnout at the polls or mail-in ballots.

The 78,819 Republican voters and 39,715 Democratic voters comprise the 118,534 county voters eligible to vote in Pennsylvania’s closed primary election. Those numbers surpass those from the last five presidential primaries dating to 2004, according the county’s archived election returns.

A total of 138,202 voters were registered as of March 26, but that number includes 834 Libertarian voters and 18,834 voters from other parties who are not eligible to vote for candidates in the primary. All voters, including Libertarians and other third-party voters, can vote on any constitutional amendments or ballot questions that may appear on a primary ballot. No amendments or questions are on the ballot this year.

“Generally, primaries have a low turnout, but this is a presidential primary,” said Chantell McCurdy, director of the Butler County Bureau of Elections. “We’re telling our poll workers to compare it to the general election in 2022. We had a turnout of 68%. We’re hoping for somewhere between 50 and 60%.”

Voter turnout for the 2020 presidential primary was 42%, McCurdy said.

In the 2020 primary, there were 112,090 registered voters (71,672 Republican and 40,418 Democratic). The archives do not include nonpartisan voter numbers in that primary.

The 2016 presidential primary saw 65,302 registered Republicans and 41,172 registered Democrats. Of those 106,473 voters, 44% turned out. There were 16,210 nonpartisan voters.

As of Monday, the bureau had mailed out about three-quarters of the 12,523 mail-in and absentee ballots that had been applied for as of last week, but hundreds of applications are showing up everyday, McCurdy said. April 16 is the deadline to apply for either ballot.

“We get a couple hundred apps everyday. Many are duplicates through a third-party organization trying to get people to vote,” McCurdy said. Of the 400 applications in the bureau’s office on Monday, two-thirds were duplicates, she said.

The bureau doesn’t send ballots when it receives an application that is a duplicate of one previously received, and the duplicate applications are flagged, she said.

Those duplicate applications are sent on behalf of voters, even if they have already applied for them from the Washington D.C.-based Republican State Leadership Committee.

The leadership committee describes itself as the largest organization of Republican state leaders in the country and only national committee whose mission is to recruit, train and elect Republicans to multiple down-ballot, state-level offices.

McCurdy said the committee has sent applications on behalf of GOP, Democratic and third party voters as well as people who are not registered to vote in the primary.

In addition to flagging the duplicate applications, the bureau sends letters to the voters named on the duplicates telling them the application has been denied because it was a duplicate, she said.

Since the bureau began mailing out absentee and mail-in ballots last week, about 1,000 completed ballots have been received, McCurdy said. Either of those ballots can be applied for and submitted at the bureau’s office at 227 W. Cunningham St. in Butler. A ballot can be submitted in person for another person only by someone who has the voter’s power of attorney, she added.

The county’s voting machines have been tested with observers from the Republican and Democratic parties and a citizen’s organization, McCurdy said.

Poll workers have been hired and training concludes this week, she said.

“We are all good to go. We are fully staffed,” McCurdy said.

One polling place was changed this year. The Middlesex Township 3 precinct poll was relocated from Crossway Community Church on Davis Road to Gospel Fellowship Presbyterian Church at 161 McFann Road.