There’s a whole lot of early voting going on.
A total of 144,598 people voted in the state’s 15 most populous counties Monday, the first day of early in-person voting for the Nov. 2 election, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. That easily surpassed the first-day total for those counties in the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000.
It’s too early to say how the first-day turnout will compare to previous election cycles when calculated as a percentage of registered voters, said Bill Kenyon, spokesman for Secretary of State Geoff Connor. Still, a number of counties are experiencing high early voting turnout, Kenyon said.
“Anecdotally, the early evidence suggests that it may be local races driving some of that,” he said.
The AusChron has a roundup of some of those local races, while the Houston Press has a big story on the Vo/Heflin race (via Greg). I’m moderately surprised that the AusChron didn’t mention HD134 and Jim Dougherty, but maybe that one’s a bit too far below the radar for them. Oh, and be sure to catch the Press sidebar piece on the bizarre Heflin adoption story. That story does not show Talmadge Heflin in a good light.
Early voting numbers are here. After two days, Harris County has triple the early voters it had in 2000. I’m not willing to ascribe all of that to a renewed sense of purpose in this election, but that’s a significant increase no matter how you look at it. Karl-T is keeping watch on the vote totals as we go.
Austin Chronicle on the Texas Lege, and my thoughts..
Great overview of fourteen of the most competitive state legislative races in this week’s Austin Chronicle. Overall, I’d be surprised if Democrats do not gain seats in the legislature this year for the first time since 1972. I think Repubulicans…