A surge of early voters turned up at the polls on Friday, the last day of early voting for the Primary Election.
Ector County Elections Administrator Lisa Sertuche said overall early voting totals were still lower than she would like to see, but the turnout ended up being a little better than the primaries in 2014. During the March 4, 2014 primary, a total of 5,469 people voted early. On Friday, a total of 5,817 ballots had been turned in or received by mail.
“Of course we can’t compare (early voting numbers) to ’16 because that was a Presidential Election,” Sertuche said, adding they were hoping to get more than 6,000.
On Thursday, ballots returned by mail and in-person voting totaled to 4,722. That number jumped to 5,817 by the end of Friday when polls closed at 7 p.m.
“That’s the day I guess everybody decided to come out,” Sertuche said. “Maybe it was the nice weather — it’s hard to tell what made them come out.”
A total of 5,051 voted in person and 766 mail ballots had been received during the early voting period, Feb. 20 through Friday, information from the elections office showed.
A breakdown of early voting totals shows most people did their early voting at Westlake Hardware Store, 4652 E. University Blvd., where a total of 2,336 people voted during the early voting period.
Information from the elections office showed 4,712 Republican ballots were turned in and 1,105 Democratic ballots were turned in during that timeframe.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday for Election Day. Sertuche encouraged residents not to forget to “come out and vote.”
