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As of Monday morning, voter turnout in Eagle County was lagging by about 6,000 ballots. That gap had closed by the early morning hours of Wednesday.

A number of people dropped their ballots into drop boxes between Monday evening and 7 p.m. Tuesday. And Eagle County Clerk and Recorder Regina O’Brien said the county’s four voter service centers — in Eagle, Vail, Avon and El Jebel — saw a record number of voters Tuesday. More than 1,300 people cast in-person ballots.

Ultimately, O’Brien’s team processed a total of 28,272 ballots, a roughly 82% turnout. While impressive, it’s still less than 2020, the last presidential election, which saw more than 1,200 votes cast compared to this year’s election.

O’Brien had said Monday that between the weather and her team already working a long day, she would probably send her team home about midnight Tuesday. Instead, the team worked until about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday to finish the job.

“At midnight we looked at how many (ballots) we had left,” O’Brien said. “We’d been so efficient with scanning, and we had some judges who offered to stay, so rather than sealing them up, we just finished.”

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The final counting was done by about 2:30 a.m., and the final accounting was finished by about 5 a.m. The team finally locked up the office a few minutes later.

O’Brien was running on just a couple of hours of sleep Wednesday morning, and was effusive in her praise of everyone who helped get the vote-collecting and counting accomplished Tuesday into Wednesday. That team was far bigger than just the 200 or so people including election judges, members of the Clerk and Recorder’s office team and members of the Eagle County Treasurer’s Office and Eagle County Assessor’s Office teams who helped with handling the volume of ballots pouring into the county administration building.

O’Brien noted that local law enforcement helped, including an Eagle Police officer who gave an election judge a ride home in the late hours on snowy roads.

The Eagle County Road and Bridge Department helped, too, by providing a sign to guide voters to the drop box at the Mountain Recreation field house in Edwards. Shaw Construction also kept the road open to that dropbox despite a construction project in the area.

In Avon, one of the supervisors provided custom mugs to the rest of the election team.

“It’s such a beautiful thing seeing so many people come together,” O’Brien said. “Community members were so supportive… It’s awesome — it’s so wonderful to have that type of engagement and support.”