Voters ages 18 to 24 have had the lowest turnout so far, continuing a longstanding pattern of lower participation among younger voters. Unaffiliated voters made up 42% of ballots returned, compared with 33% from registered Democrats and 25% from Republicans.

Those ballot shares differ from the makeup of the state’s active voter rolls last month: 51% unaffiliated, 25% Democratic and 22% Republican, with the remainder registered to third parties.

The count is higher than Colorado’s pace in the 2022 midterms, when 742,935 ballots had been returned by Oct. 26. It trails the 2024 presidential election, when 1.3 million voters had returned ballots by the comparable point. Midterm elections generally draw fewer voters than presidential contests.

A new state law allowing mail ballots to be sent a week earlier may be one factor in this year’s pace. The law’s sponsors said the earlier mailing window would give voters more time amid concerns about possible postal delays. “People are concerned about the Postal Service and how that might be used to slow things down, and so we want to ensure that there is plenty of time to be able to work through that,” Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat, said.

The change comes amid national political disputes over mail voting. President Donald Trump has criticized mail ballots and alleged they can be used for fraud. Last spring, he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to compile voter lists and restricting certain U.S. Postal Service delivery criteria. Federal courts blocked the order temporarily, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that injunction last month, according to the reported court history.

The deadline for ballots to be received is 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 3. Monday, Oct. 26, was the final day to mail a ballot; election officials advised voters to use a local drop box for ballots submitted after that date.