Voter Turnout Thread

Early voting (and beyond).

For openers, how was the first day in your state?

“Records Broken On First Day Of Early Voting Throughout Texas”

How many people in Texas are early-voting just to be sure that they actually can vote? Like, if you go to vote and find out you can’t, then maybe you have enough time to fix it and then vote?

Just want to include a shout-out for my pals and gals still in the Colon of the Beast. You have my unstinting support from waaay up here!

Pew Research Center:

Some interesting charts and stats on this page.

New Mexico
“Early voting hike attributed to high Democrat turnout”

Florida
“Central Floridians take advantage of 1st day of early voting”

33% more dems voted than expected. Compared to total votes, D are up 6% overall in EV, while R are down 6% overall.

Interesting paragraph from the Upshot in NYT:

“And Mrs. Clinton is already reaping the benefits of a strong turnout in early voting. So far, she has a significant lead among people who have already voted, based on the responses from early voters and the demographic characteristics of the people who have voted early, according to the state Board of Elections. Notably, virtually no supporters of Mr. Johnson have turned out.”

Thanks, 'luci–it beats the usual abuse we get here. I’m not part of the day 1 record breakers, but I’ll be voting early, too. (Not that I fit the profile they’d like to suppress down here.) Besides, it leaves me that much more free time on election day. Maybe I’ll find something useful to do.

Early Voting Results & Turnout State-by-State

Details follow in the article.

Anecdotal: I went to vote today, and they were still fairly busy. One of the poll workers said they’d had over 2000 people through today.

I’ll unclench when the final the-one-that-counts tally is in and the increase in numbers isn’t the increase in new voters Trump is claiming to have inspired.

I am seriously wondering how many of these “newly inspired Trump voters” actually bothered to get registered. Many of them apparently were not before, and Trump’s ground game and organization in the area of registrations has been pathetic.

Yeah, hopefully it’s actually a difference in GOTV organization. It’s one thing to hear there’s a big tail-gating rally and hootenanny to go to and whoop it up, it’s another thing to go home and register. But then again, I can’t imagine that there weren’t plenty of clipboard-carrying volunteers registering as many attendees as possible. Could his GOTV campaign be that weak? (And, of course, the thousands that have been do the rally aren’t equal to the millions he needs.)

No such chance.

The vote suppressors in Texas have cleverly made the deadline for registering to vote a couple of weeks before early voting starts.

That appears to be the case in a lot of states, not just Texas.

https://www.rockthevote.com/get-informed/elections/important-election-dates-deadlines/by-state.html

Oh, certainly!
I didn’t mean to say that vote suppressors were at work in only Texas.

Personally, I think all 37 states that don’t allow election-day registration are suppressing votes. I expect we’ll see Courts ruling that, someday. Just like we no longer allow poll taxes, reading tests, etc. to limit voting.

Maddow said the other night that there are reports that the sheets where rally attendees signed up to volunteer were simply left behind at some rally venues - it could really be that weak. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(Sorry no cite - she was referring to reporting by another news org, though)

At any competently-run political event, you don’t just have sign-up sheets to get volunteers: You have a table set up to actually get people registered right there on the spot. And even without going to any events, I’ve been asked at least three times to register this cycle by folks just going around with clipboards, at public parks and the like.