Saturday, April 10, 2010

Early Voting Ends: Dems Turn Out in Dribbles

Early voting for the Democratic and Republican primary runoffs ended yesterday. The results for the Democratic early vote turnout were less than spectacular.

It was, in a word, astonishingly scant, with a total of 309 Democratic ballots cast countywide.

Now granted, there are no countywide races to be decided here. And there are only two races on the ballot, total. And only in three county precincts do both races appear on the same ballot. But it is nevertheless a scandalously low turnout by anyone’s measurement.

The Democratic runoff races were for the Democratic nomination to run in TX CD-14 against Congressman Ron Paul, a race limited to a mere twelve out of 141 Fort Bend County precincts, precincts that are for the most part dominated by Republicans. But in the three early voting locations within CD-14 district boundaries, we count a total of 42 Democratic ballots cast.

Granted, an early vote can be cast from any voting location so reporting that low, low number may be unfair. But I bet it's close.

The other race is limited to Precinct 1 voters who need to decide between Aurelia Moore and some other guy, the two top vote getters in the Justice of the Peace Place 2 race. My guess is that the bulk of the 309 ballots cast were for this race simply because Precinct 1 contains 35 precincts and the Fort Bend portion of CD-14 covers only 12 or so precincts.

And I can only hope that Democrats are just biding their time and will make the big turnout on Tuesday, April 13th.

But I am characteristically pessimistic about the latter.

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