Tue
Aug 5 2008
08:21:am
Early voting: Increased interest in local races?
By: R. Neal  shortURL

Early voting totals for Blount County:

Total early votes: 4976 (7.9%)
Democratic Primary: 1003
Republican Primary: 3936

Feb. 08 Primary early votes: 4577 (6.5%)
Aug. 06 General early votes: 3852 (5.1%)

Early voting turnout for Thursday's Aug. 7th 2008 county general and state primary election was 7.9% of active registered voters, significantly higher than the state average of 6.1%.

UPDATE: Here's a puzzler. Active registered voters:

June 2004: 64,396
June 2005: 71,992
June 2006: 75,065
June 2007: 67,238
June 2008: 62,702

Note the decline from 2006 to 2008. This makes the 7.9% turnout figure suspect. What happened to the 12,000+ registered voters who disappeared between June 2006 and June 2008? Did ol' Jerry run off all those people who weren't from around here?

(Source)

UPDATE: For comparison:

Knox:

June 2004: 206,051
June 2005: 238,001
June 2006: 241,424
June 2007: 219,659
June 2008: 239,873

Sevier:

June 2004: 39,163
June 2005: 43,412
June 2006: 44,792
June 2007: 45,465
June 2008: 43,351

UPDATE: Blount Co. Administrator of Elections Libby Breeding explains. She took over in 2007. Previously, the count of active registered voters was being maintained by hand. When she compared it to the computerized records, there was a huge discrepancy. She did not want to file a certified report based on suspect numbers, so she asked the Tennessee Division of Elections for guidance. They approved "starting over" using the more accurate computer counts.

Topics:

That's a 16.5% reduction for

Submitted by bizgrrl on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 09:18.

That's a 16.5% reduction for Blount County from 2006 to 2008.
Whereas, Knox County had a 0.6% reduction in that same time period and Sevier County had a 3.2% reduction in registered voters.

I thought Blount County was growing.

my guess is the purge

Submitted by mello on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 09:22.

I used to get election mail for 'voters' who sold the house and moved 14 years ago! We know there are many folks on the voter rolls who moved away and vote else where. This actually protects those 'lost' voters.

The Elections Commission has many hoops to jump to remove those voters. I still think there are a great many on the current rolls who vote else where and not in BC.

According to the US Census

Submitted by bizgrrl on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 10:03.

According to the US Census estimates at the American Fact Finder, Blount County added 1,921 people (1.6%) from 2006 to 2007. That's only about 5 people per day. Growth, but not huge. The growth rate, 1.6%, is just below Knox County, 1.8%.

When we moved to Seminole County Florida in 1983, the population was 209,000. When we left in 2000, the population was 368,000. That's a 76% increase in 17 years. That's approx. 25 people a day for 17 years. The population has increased by another 59,000 in the past 7 years. Only 23 people a day.

Not that I'd want Blount to grow at the pace of Seminole.

Mello is Correct

Submitted by Tennessee Democrat on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 13:46.

Mello is Correct. Libby cleaned up list.

I'm sure the list is cleaned

Submitted by bizgrrl on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 14:24.

I'm sure the list is cleaned up regularly, now that Libby is in charge.

We spoke with Libby, see the update in the original post. They had to "start over" in 2007 with completely different numbers due to the previous method for calculating "active registered voters".

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