As of October 1st, the Durham Board of Elections listed 168,482 “active voters” in Durham. (Active voters is a technical term used, but not defined, by the Board of Elections.)
Early voting has started; in fact we’re 10 days into the 17 days of One Stop Voting. I voted yesterday, and the machine said that my ballot was the 9735th ballot read. That number represents the cumulative total for that particular voting location (in my case, the Board of Elections, which is downtown across the street from the old Durham Bull ballpark). And that got me curious about how voting was going in the rest of Durham.
As of the end of the day yesterday (Friday), 44,563 people have already voted in Durham County.
So, if all of the people who have voted were considered by October 1st to be active voters, then that means that Durham has already a 44% 27% rate of voter turnout. Of course, that percentage is actually lower, given the record-breaking number of new registrants and first time voters signed up to vote in this election. Nevertheless, for 44,563 people to have voted already bodes well for the possibility of setting new records in Durham for voter turnout.
For some sense of perspective, in this May’s primary, 80,321 people voted.
In the 2006 general election, Durham had 56,213 turn out to vote.
In 2004, 111,685.
In 2002, 67,505.
And in 2000, 87,467.
With early voting locations at the Durham Board of Elections office, Duke University, East Regional Library, Forestview Elementary, North Carolina Central University, North, Regional Library, and Southwest Elementary and with early voting dates every day of the week (including Saturdays and Sundays), there is no excuse not to vote this year.
If you wait until Election Day (November 4th), you need to vote at your precinct. If you don’t know where that is, try using this simple tool to find your polling place. http://maps.google.com/vote
Obama’s counting on us to get out the vote. No excuses.
Other accounts of early voting:
Diane Daniel
Barry Ragin
