that were first used in the GE in 2019. IMHO they were horrible and when I saw the no-excuse absentee option become available, I jumped right on it. I don't trust any ES&S machine and I have a concern about the thermal paper used as the "blank" ballot for those machines that will be the paper trail of the selections. Thermal paper is notorious for fading. I'd prefer something like the mail-ins --heavy stock paper with fill-in-the-oval selections, and that gets fed into a scanner.
Because of the pandemic, we were down almost 100 polling locations too (normally have over 800), although that was worlds better than the 150 total that were all they could staff back during the primary. 
But I would disagree about comparing this year with other years because it is obvious that in past years, the turnout across the state hasn't been robust either. The fact that they are calling this year a "record turnout" basically indicates that. I have posted many times over the years about the "lazy suburbs" where many there are not voting and people keep pointing at the city to save them. With the number of protests that went on all summer -notably in the 'burbs, which was amazing to me - that sortof became an indicator that people were finally waking up and looking at what was at stake!
If anything, I am hoping that the availability of those mail-ins will at least help to keep the state-wide turnout up a few notches as it is certainly convenient!
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