Early voting has surged in recent years, but Tuesday’s Ohio primary elections are bucking the trend, with local counties reporting lower turnout for in-person and mailed absentee voting.

As of Thursday, the Montgomery County Board of Elections received just 4,984 early ballots.

“For a presidential primary, we’re running about one-third of normal volume,” Board Director Steve Harsman said. “We had about 15,000 or 16,000 (early ballots) in 2008.”

A slow trickle of voters visited the board office in downtown Dayton on Friday morning — perhaps 10 in an hour.

Even Warren County, with a much higher percentage of Republican voters, is seeing less early turnout for a tight Republican presidential primary. By Thursday, Warren County’s board of elections had received 3,102 “countable ballots,” just more than half of the early turnout from the 2008 primary.

“Some people were afraid their candidate was going to drop out,” said Warren County Deputy Director Kimberlie Antrican, explaining voters’ unwillingness to commit their vote early. “And some want to hear more of what (candidates) have to say.”

Early voting ended at 6 p.m. Friday, under state law that took effect in 2011. Those who didn’t vote early now must wait until polls open on Tuesday morning.

In Miami County, only 1,376 early votes had been received by Friday morning, and Board of Elections Director Steve Quillen said he didn’t expect to see voters knocking on the door Monday expecting to vote.

“It’s been very slow compared to the gubernatorial race of 2010, and even the Senate Bill 5 issue (last fall) had more early votes than this,” Quillen said.

Ohio voters had the same 35-day early-voting window this year as in recent years, but counties vary in access. Montgomery County opened its office for in-person voting on two weekend days, Warren County did so for one day, and Miami County had no weekend voting hours. Evening hours varied, too.

David Collins of Washington Twp. voted early for the first time Friday morning, saying he’ll be tied up with business issues Tuesday. He said the frequently changing nature of the Republican presidential primary likely has held down early vote totals.

“I think a lot of people could change their minds at the last minute,” he said. “I went back and forth among a couple candidates myself.”

Kenneth McNeal of Clayton, a frequent early voter, said he cast a ballot for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Friday, saying the months of debates and public exposure, “confirmed where I had wanted to vote to begin with.”

Clark County elections director Mark Oster said his county has seen less than half as many early votes as it did four years ago. He said there are very few local tax issues or contested local races on the ballot to draw voters. Oster said he saw a surge of absentee ballots from people spending the winter in Florida and Arizona, where the presidential primaries were held last month, and residents had already seen the advertising blitz.

Washington Twp. voter Gerry Smith won’t be able to get to the polls Tuesday, and he said the still-in-doubt presidential race is one reason he voted early on Friday. In 2008, Romney withdrew from the race less than a month before Ohio voted, and John McCain had all but sealed the Republican presidential bid by Super Tuesday.

“Usually in Ohio’s primary, the winner was picked months ago,” Smith said. “One reason I took the time to come down and vote early is because it is such a fluid situation, I felt my vote was important.”

Primary elections have lower turnout — Harsman is predicting 22 percent Tuesday — but election officials agreed that with more voters, early voting is likely to spike again for the November election. In the 2008 general election, 10,000 people in Montgomery County alone cast early ballots on the last three days before the election.

“It won’t be (quiet) like this in November, I can guarantee you that,” Harsman said.