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 [1])
UPDATE: For comparison:
|
Knox:
June 2004: 206,051 |
Sevier:
June 2004: 39,163 |
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.