Early voting ends today (Thursday) for Chicago‘s twelve aldermanic run-offs.

Jim Allen is with the Chicago Board of Elections.

He says more people took advantage of early voting over the past few weeks than ever before.

ALLEN: We’re seeing a pretty significant increase in participation in these runoff wards where there is a lot of interest, there’s a lot of activity both by the incumbents, and certainly the challengers — the more involvement that you have, obviously, that’s going to drive up more turnout, more interest.

Allen says in wards with run-offs, twice as many people voted early as did in February.

Chicago began offering early voting for the March 2006 primary

Early voting allows citizens to cast ballots before election day at any authorized polling station.

Chicago‘s aldermanic run-off election is next Tuesday.