Posted on 10/21/2008 9:41:48 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
Long lines and record turnout marked the first to vote early in the Nov. 4 general election.
With the U.S. presidency up for grabs and a host of high profile local issues and races on the ballot, thousands of South Texas voters took advantage Monday of the opportunity to cast ballots early.
By 3 p.m., county election officials in Nueces, Aransas, Jim Wells and San Patricio counties were doing early tallies that indicated record first-day turnout was likely in each county.
Nueces County Clerk Diana Barrera said 4,829 people voted Monday -- more than double the turnout for first-day voting in past presidential election years.
"It's so exciting to see the number of people who are voting early," Barrera said. "We anticipate that these numbers will be maintained throughout the early voting period, making for a very historic turnout."
The large numbers were despite an electrical problem at the Nueces County Courthouse that stalled some of the county's voting machines for about 20 minutes in the morning, Barrera said.
Turnout was heavy in other heavily-populated counties too, including Harris, Dallas and Bexar counties. Bexar County reported more than 8,500 voters had cast ballots before noon, which was more than the first-day totals for the San Antonio area in 2004, according to Associated Press reports.
Sporting a patriotic "I voted" sticker, local attorney Gordon Morgan, 52, stepped away from the throngs of people at the Nueces County Courthouse saying that he voted Monday to avoid long lines on Election Day.
"I was in line anyway, but it would have been longer on Election Day," he said. "Ten minutes in line today. It was well-organized, easy to do and the instructions are simple."
Barrera said in addition to avoiding Election Day lines, many people vote early because they can cast a ballot at any location in the county.
"It's the convenience with early voting," she said. "Some people are more traditional and like to wait until Election Day, which is OK, too."
If Monday's showing is any indicator, Election Day and the rest of early voting, which runs through Oct. 31, could be swamped with voters, Barrera said.
She initially was predicting 65 percent of the county's 199,016 registered voters would turn out, a number she is ratcheting up.
The turnout record in Nueces County was set in 1992, when Bill Clinton was seeking his first term and 69.1 percent of the county's 144,844 registered voters went to the polls.
Of those, 21.9 percent voted early and 47.2 waited until election day to vote.
"You don't know how many will turn out, but if today is any indication of what the community is doing I would expect a record number of voters," she said.
Who knows the demographics of the counties. R or D?
One commenter said: I've been voting for 37 years (I'm 58) and this is the first time I've been excited to go vote. This is also the first time my candidate has made it through the primaries. Thanks to the ease of fund raising through the internet, the people's choice, not the party establishment's choice is on the ballot. I voted for Obama.
Been voting for loosers your whole life then? No reason to change now, I guess.
Texas is RED, so there is no worry. Early turnout in other places like Ohio hasn’t been so great.
Corpus Christi and surrounding counties historically are *swing* areas in Texas politics, with a slight Democratic lean (San Patricio is closer to even, along with Aransas. Jim Wells is slightly more Democratic).
Nueces County used to be a very heavily Democrat county. In recent years, it has become a swing county that is almost 50%-50%. In 2006 Nueces County elected a Republican County Judge and Sherriff for the first time since the end of Reconstruction on a night when Republicans were getting slaughtered nationwide and in particular lost control of the Dallas County and Harris County courthouses.
The control of the Texas House may come down to three races in districts containing parts of Nueces County where Republicans have a shot at knocking off some very junior Democrat legislators two of whom are freshmen. The other has served just two terms. All three incumbents received lots of money from Mauricio Celis in 2006. Last year Celis who was born in Monclova, Mexico was arrested wearing a bathrobe at a convenience store where he chased a naked woman near his house in Corpus Christi. He claimed to be an assistant dupty from Duval County. The new Republican Sherriff checked up on Celis' law enforcement credentials and found out that they had expired three years previously. Furthermore it was discovered that Celis apparently had no record of graduating from law school or having a law license either in Texas or Mexico even though he claimed to be a lawyer. Not long after this information was reported by San Antonio newspapers, Mikal Watts, a very wealthy local trial lawyer dropped out of the race for the Democrat nomination for the Senate seat currently held by John Cornyn after spending $8 million of his own money on the race. Watt's law firm had received numerous referrals of cases from Celis, and Watts and his trial lawyer buddies had donated thousands of dollars to Celis' PAC. Later on the feds indicted Celis on money laundering charges. Apparently he was flying large quantities of money between the US and Mexico on his private plane.
Below are some links about Celis
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/016636.phphttp://www.freerepublic.com/tag/celis/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2007470/posts
http://www.kiiitv.com/news/local/18191979.html
http://halfempth.blogspot.com/2007/10/mikal-watts-accepts-4600-from-great.html
I was just at a political meeting yesterday where the guest speaker discussed many of the races in Texas. He told us that some of the previously solid Republican areas of Texas are becoming swing areas, especially parts of North Dallas, suburban Dallas County, suburban Tarrant County, and parts of suburban Harris County.
There are lots of professionals who tend to vote Republican who vote early, because they don't have much control of when they will be in or out of town. Even before early voting was legalized, my father used to frequently request absentee ballots, because he would often have to travel to Houston on business on short notice or go out in the field to monitor a well being drilled or logged.
Another advantage to early voting is that it can counteract the media's propaganda that is designed to discourage Republicans from voting. Remember the exit polling in 2000 and 2004 that was inaccurate but indicated Gore and Kerry would win? Several networks called Florida for Gore while people were still voting in the Florida panhandle. As a result thousands of people went home rather than stay in line and vote for Bush. If lots of Republicans vote early, they will be immune to those media tricks designed to suppress Republican turnout.
I forget about absentee ballets when talking early voting, and so does the media. They just report on who is coming to the polling sites. So far, it appears a lot of stories like the one from Texas in this thread.
Not good news for us.
The Republican Party of Nueces County is encouraging Republicans to get out and vote early, especially in the first few days of early voting.
I voted Monday in 70% Republican Denton County!
Took all of 3 minutes from the time I walked in the door.
Thank you all for your insight. I’m trying to get a feel for the specifics in the individual state’s areas. There is a link to a Financial Times article on Drudge (10-22) that does a great job of analyzing the difference in poll numbers. Even with the explaination, though, I am still saying “I don’t know” when asked who I think will win. My unknowns are the PUMA’s and the 1/3rd of Democrat voters (yes, Democrats) who say they have trouble with O’bama. Still praying!
Early Voting Ping!)
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
The signs all along the path had VOTE/Aqui which I believe means vote here. So even if she couldn't read VOTE, she could clearly see "here" with arrows pointing to the room.
Sure, they were legal residents - neither one speaks one word of English but they can vote here.
South Texas is mostly Dem. Repubs are a scarce minority. The nice thing is that overall Texas is red. May not be red for too long if we keep getting these west coast liberals moving over here.
I am in Arlington, Tx and tried to vote yesterday..no way. I went and they had traffic control guys directing traffic, got close with my disabled placard but left. The line was out the door and down a sidewalk, looked like at least a hour and a half wait, had to be at least 75 or more people in line. This was at 10:30am. I will try again tomorrow but go at 8am. Have read that Arlington is the strongest Republican city in Texas.
At 8:00 am there were about 80-100 people in line and people were pouring into the parking lot.
I got there about 7:20 and was out at 8:05.
Only voted once so it was quick.
The Clear Lake area of Houston is very strong Republican.
I was the first to vote early in Kenny Co. Texas. It took about two minutes to sign in, mark the ballot and drop it in the ballot box.
Did you have any local propositions and bond issues? We had lots of big ticket bond issues on the ballot. There were also some "non-partisan" races for the community college district and school district and some school district bond issues.
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