Nearly 90,000 Minnesotans have already voted in this fall’s election, 20,000 of them in Washington, Ramsey and Dakota county alone.

The latest numbers from the secretary of state’s office show the impact of a presidential election year, campaign to get partisans to vote before Election Day and a fairly new law that allows anyone to vote using an absentee ballot.

The latest numbers, updated Thursday, obliterate all previous records.

At the end of the 2014 election, the first one for which voters didn’t need an excuse to vote in advance, fewer than 13,000 people statewide used an absentee or mail ballot to vote. In the 2012 election year, before the no-excuses-needed law, only 21,000 voters used absentee ballots. The 2012 figure does not include mail-only ballots, which small outstate municipalities can use rather than opening polling places.

This year is tossing aside all those previous records. Already this year, more than 22,000 voters in Ramsey County alone have been sent or given ballots and nearly 9,000 people have already voted using absentee ballots, either in person or by mail.

In total, 88,593 voters have had absentee ballots accepted.

As of Thursday morning, absentee ballots had already been sent or given to almost 210,000 voters statewide. Another 62,000 Minnesotans in small towns and cities outside of the metro area have been sent mail-in ballots. Voters have until Nov. 8 to get those ballots back to election offices.

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Trump and Biden hit the now battleground state of Minnesota About 3 million people are expected to vote in the presidential election this year.

The numbers of advanced voters are highest in populous areas so far this year but a higher percentage of a counties’ voters who cast votes before Election Day might end up coming from outstate counties.

Two years ago, nearly 80 percent of Cook County residents voted by mail or absentee ballot. Only about 11 percent of voters in Ramsey, Washington and Dakota counties used absentee ballots that year.

Voters can apply online for an absentee ballot through MNvotes.org, a site from the Minnesota secretary of state’s office. They can also use that site to register to vote.

Starting Sept. 23, they also can vote absentee in-person at local county election offices or, in more than a dozen counties — including Hennepin, Ramsey, Washington, Dakota and Anoka — at other official locations, including city halls. That in-person option is available only through Monday, Nov. 7.

If voters can’t go online to find the correct location to apply for an absentee ballot or cast an in-person absentee vote, they could call their local county offices to get the proper address.

No matter how they vote, the deadline is the same: Ballots must be received by Election Day, Nov. 8.