As early voting begins at a steady clip across the Island, the race for nine elected seats on the Martha’s Vineyard Commission tops local electoral matters on the ballot this year. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission is a unique regional planning agency with 17 voting members, nine of them elected at large every two years (the rest are appointed). While the election is at large, it has a twist: Under the state legislation that created the commission, at least one and not more than two people must be elected from each of the six Island towns.

There are nine candidates on the ballot this year, but with no one on the ballot from Chilmark and three candidates running from Tisbury, voters are presented with a somewhat unusual slate.

The only real race will be in Tisbury, where incumbent commissioners Josh Goldstein and Clarence A. (Trip) Barnes 3rd are seeking re-election, along with Ben Robinson. Mr. Robinson has been serving as an appointed member from Tisbury since 2016, and has been unanimously appointed by the selectmen every year since. He is now seeking an elected seat.

The Gazette has submitted questionnaires to commission candidates by email and will run the results early next week online and in print next Friday.

Rob Doyle, an elected member of the MVC from Chilmark, decided not to run this year, and no one else took out nomination papers. As a result no one from Chilmark appears on the ballot for the commission race. Jay Grossman has been campaigning as a write-in candidate from Chilmark.

Other commission candidates are as follows:

Jeffrey Agnoli and Christina Brown from Edgartown, with Ms. Brown running as an incumbent; Fred Hancock, an incumbent from Oak Bluffs; Doug Sederholm and Linda Sibley, both incumbents from West Tisbury; James Vercruysse, an incumbent from Aquinnah.

Oak Bluffs incumbent Richard Toole is not seeking re-election,

Early voting began last Saturday and has been popular in all six Island towns, with registration numbers up and enthusiastic voters queuing up outside polling places to participate in a historic presidential election that has dominated the news for months on end.

Early voting runs through Oct. 30. Oct. 24 is the last day to register to vote in the presidential election.

In Edgartown on Saturday, a line of about 30 voters were camped outside the town hall door around 1:45 p.m., waiting eagerly for the two o’clock chimes from the Old Whaling Church to ring in an election season three and a half years in the making. Similar lines were noted in Tisbury and Oak Bluffs.

“Everyone was excited,” Tisbury town clerk J. Hilary Conklin said. “It’s like the first day of the fair.”

Voter registration has exceeded 4,000 in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, high numbers compared to the recent primary elections and the 2016 presidential election.

Mail-in ballots have also been flowing into town clerk offices. Down-Island clerks reported sending out more than 1,000 ballots as voters attempt to navigate elections altered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The voting has gone relatively smoothly, town clerks reported, although Oak Bluffs clerk Colleen Morris took responsibility for a glitch in approximately 400 mail-in ballots that were sent out earlier this month. The ballots were sent out without their yellow return envelope, Ms. Morris said, an issue she said was partially a result of town employees having to move out of the town hall, as renovations begin.

“With the process of the move, and moving into a space half the size of what I had before . . . things get confused,” Ms. Morris said. “Once we realized the glitch, all we did was mail out yellow envelopes to the people who were affected.”

The town clerk said the problem affected people with last names starting with the letter M through the end of the alphabet, although it did not affect everyone in that range. She said the issue has been rectified, and that she has been receiving mail-in ballots at a normal rate.

“It’s all been remedied,” Ms. Morris said. “They’re all there, and the voters have been excited. It’s working.”