Travis County’s early voting numbers took their expected dip this weekend, but still stayed ahead of pace from the record year of 2004. Sunday is always the slowest day, but today’s dip down to 8,463 topped the 7,307 Sunday four years ago. That brings us to a total of 154,970, or one-quarter of registered voters. The record in 2004 was 222,085, which at that time was 40% of registereds.
The early vote this year (including mail-in ballots) was already well outstripping 2004 during the weekdays, ranging from 32,607 Monday to 23,125 on Thursday, compared to the 16,446 average of the first five days of the previous presidential election.
In 2004, the second week saw the numbers curve back up, culminating in 30,987 on the final day. This year, however, the final day falls on Halloween, so County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir is pleading with would-be voters to cast ballots as soon as possible, both to avoid the distractions that the holiday will present as well as to relieve what is expected to be a crush on Election Day (Tuesday, Nov. 4).
How are we stacking up against the rest of the state? The Secretary of State’s office last updated their numbers on Oct. 23, at which point Travis was at 17.7%, easily the best of Texas’ 15 most populous counties. Next best was Fort Bend at 16.4%, followed by Williamson at 15.3%.
Biggest in sheer numbers, as one would expect, was Harris at 208,010 voters (10.7%), followed by Dallas’ 158,463 (13.1%) and Tarrant’s 139,127 (14.5%).
This article appears in October 24 • 2008.