Election official hopeful about improved turnout in November

Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2002 | 9:35 a.m.

Encouraged by an accurate prediction of voter turnout for Tuesday's primary election, Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said today he is hopeful for a 50 percent turnout for November's general election.

"With very limited time I have had to look at this, I would guess as many as half of the registered voters" will vote on Nov. 5, Lomax said this morning, hours after 25.7 percent of the voters had turned out for the primary.

Lomax had predicted a 25 percent turnout for a combination of early voting, mail-ins and Election Day.

He also had predicted that between 55 percent and 58 percent of the voting would have been done before Election Day. In the end 55 percent -- 44 percent by early voting and 11 percent by mail -- voted before Tuesday.

"It was about the same as in the 2000 general election, when 44 percent voted early, 13 percent voted by mail and 43 percent of the total vote came on Election Day," Lomax said.

The final numbers Tuesday were 132,698 of the county's 516,950 registered voters cast ballots -- 59,829 on Election Day, 58,037 by early voting and 14,832 by mail.

In anticipation of a good November turnout, which will include ballot questions such as the hotly contested marijuana initiative, Lomax said many more voting machines will be put at the 322 polling sites.

On Tuesday 1,500 of the 2,386 machines in stock were set up.