GOP turns out early to vote in valley

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

Although significantly outnumbered in registered voters, 400 more Republicans have taken advantage of early voting than Democrats during the first three days of balloting.

Statistics compiled by the Clark County Election Department show that 12,036 Republicans voted Saturday through Monday at locations throughout the Las Vegas Valley compared to 11,623 Democrats.

As of today, there are 248,799 registered Democrats compared to 213,104 registered Republicans. Although voter registration for the Nov. 7 election has ended, the Election Department is still accepting mail-in registrations that were postmarked before the recent cutoff date.

"We should not draw conclusions too quickly from these statistics," Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said today. "Our mobile units haven't been everywhere in the valley yet."

Lomax said that 1,552 people voted at the Lowes home improvement store in District C, one of the few areas where Republicans outnumber Democrats and that may have been a contributing factor in the Republican lead.

While the election department breaks down votes by parties, it does not have a running count of how the races are going. The department's computers count the votes daily, but that data is encrypted and won't be decoded and recorded until after the polls close on Nov. 7, Lomax said.

To date, 26,936 people have voted early, including 3,277 independents and unaffiliated voters.

On Monday 9,157 people voted early, up from 8,063 on Sunday, but down from the 9,716 voters on opening day Saturday.

Lomax has projected that as much as 40 percent of the total vote in the general election could come from early voting. A 60 percent to 70 percent turnout is expected, he said.