Central Texans Flood the Polls

[Fleshdancer]

HEB parking lot on South Congress on Friday (WOW!):



..."We've been hit with a tidal wave," Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said. "Our numbers are through the roof."

In Travis County, about 177,500 people had cast ballots as of Thursday night, roughly 30 percent of registered voters. Election officials expected 30,000 voters to show up on Friday, the final day of early voting, and had already seen 11,000 people by noon.

Election officials won't start counting the early ballots until Tuesday. They will also be counting about 9,000 mailed ballots.

About 23 percent of registered voters cast their votes early in Travis County in 2000, the year of the last presidential election.

:)

[efhmc]

1. Thanks for that picture. Record number of voters are always good for

DEMOCRATS!!!

[ginamac]

2. Update!

From the austinforchange.com Website:

217,428 people voted early in Travis County this year. In 2000, 139,886 votes were cast early, out of a total for the whole election of 303,053.

I also saw a new story on the Statesman site that quoted DeBeauvoir as saying that typically half of Travis voters vote early. So, if there hasn't been a skew to early voting, we can expect 200,000 more votes cast on Tuesday.

I'll be working my precinct to try to help new voters standing in line ensure they are in the right precinct before they waste a bunch of time in line, encourage them to stay in line and vote, explain provisional ballots in case they haven't gotten into the voter reg computer system yet, etc.

Woo hoo!