Monday, Nov. 4, 2002 | 11:05 a.m.
Native Las Vegan Ty Vangrossi was voting for the first time, and he decided like tens of thousands of others to do it early instead of waiting for Election Day Tuesday.
Vangrossi, 18, a student, joined a flurry of nearly 20,000 last-day early voters Friday. He went to Belz Factory Outlet World with his dad, Rudy, who also cast his ballot.
"I decided to take my father's advice and avoid the hustle and bustle of Election Day," said Vangrossi, who did not vote in the primary election in September. "It was convenient.
"I had made up my mind on the issues and candidates, primarily by reading the newspapers and by researching on the Internet. The last-minute campaigning wasn't going to change my mind. Besides, the ads just seem like a lot of slander."
The last-minute campaigning didn't affect thousands of Clark County voters.
About 25 percent of Clark County's 547,758 registered voters cast ballots during the 14-day early voting period, Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said. The 136,756 votes doesn't approach the high of 167,522 votes cast early in 2000, but that was a presidential election.
More than 19 percent of Nevada's 869,801 voters cast their ballots early in this election, although the secretary of state's office said this morning that several rural counties had not report early voting totals.
In Washoe County, only 6 percent of the registered voters cast ballots early.
Lomax predicts another 25 percent of Clark County's eligible voters will vote Tuesday between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. and another 5 percent will cast their ballots by mail. His projected 55 percent voter turnout, not unexpectedly, is a significant dip from the hotly contested presidential election turnout of 69 percent.
For the last several years early voting has been close between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans usually have a better turnout on percentage. This year Republicans, though far fewer in number, narrowly won the early voting.
There were 59,422 early Republican voters compared to 58,910 Democrats, even though there are 242,849 registered Democrats and 210,005 registered Republican voters.
In the 2000 general election, Democrats narrowly beat the GOP in early voting, 72,879-72,132, but Republicans on percentage had a better early-voting turnout because there were 36,000 more registered Democrats.
Lomax said that during this year's primary it also was nip-and-tuck despite far more Democrats being registered. Also, more Democrats tend to vote on Election Day.
Lomax says he has not studied early voting and Election Day voting trends by party and knows no reason why it turns out the way it does. He does, however, believe that early voting increases participation by both parties and others.
"I am confident that early voting has increased turnout," Lomax said. "There is no way to determine how many people would not vote for whatever reason on Election Day but do vote because of the convenience of picking the day to vote early. It is more than a convenience. It is a catalyst."
Early voting, he said, is "the most popular thing we do" based on the compliments his crews receive at the seven fixed sites and at the seven mobile units that operate throughout the valley.
At the polls Friday, Ty Vangrossi's father snapped photos as Ty cast his first ballot. Unlike traditional voting booths, the electronic touch machines are in the open and do not have a curtain around them.
"The shopping mall atmosphere for voting definitely is a different experience," said Rudy Vangrossi, a local casino floorman. "I would not feel comfortable taking pictures in a voting precinct on Election Day. But here it seems OK.
"I've voted early and I've voted on Election Day, and the process seems to go quicker voting early. I have endured some long lines on Election Day. And I would say it's true that without early voting, a number of people might not vote."
Friday was by far the busiest day with 19,985 voters casting ballots.
"It has been so busy today -- it's great," said Linda Wolf, team leader at the Belz Factory Outlet World on Las Vegas Boulevard South, where the Election Department employee of eight years has run the early voting for the past three years.
"This is thought of as more of a tourist mall, but the locals love to come here to vote. We've had at times today all 25 machines in use at once."
By day's end the Belz voting site, which had as few as 485 voters per day and as many as 981 during the first 13 days, shattered those figures with 1,576 ballot-casters.
The same was true throughout the valley. The busiest of all fixed sites, the Galleria at Sunset in Henderson, had 3,456 voters Friday, distancing its previous high total for this election, 2,210 last Wednesday. The second-busiest site, Meadows mall, had 3,203 voters Friday, beating its previous high of 1,944 last Wednesday.
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