County election official counting on early voting

Clark County expected to get 80 percent turnout — including half of that during early voting period

Monday, Oct. 20, 2008 | 2:33 p.m.

If you already know how you're going to vote in the general election, you might as well cast your ballot during the early voting period, says Clark County's chief election official.

"The lines won't be as long this week," Harvard L. Lomax, the county's registrar of voters, said today. "It's always easier to vote in the evening, rather than in the day."

Lomax is pushing early voting, hoping to get about half of the county's expected 80 percent turnout, or about 640,000 voters, out to the polls before the Nov. 4 election day. There are 815,000 registered, he said.

"We're off to a good start," he said.

More than 45,000 voters took advantage Saturday and Sunday of the early voting period, casting their ballots at various locations around the county.

Early voting continues through Oct. 31 at 87 locations, he said.

Lomax said he couldn't draw any conclusions or any trends this early about the turnout.

"There's no question, at least initially, there were a lot of Democrats," he said. The weekend voting brought in 27,526 Democrats, compared to 11,090 Republicans and 7,056 voters with no party affiliation.

Lomax said he noticed the weekend's mail-in votes were down, compared to the first weekend of the last two elections. The 11,904 mail-in votes were split up as follows: 5,409 Republicans, 4,947 Democrats and 1,548 no part affiliation.

No special voting drives are being planned by the election office, but the political parties might have their own get-out-the-vote events, he said.

One was held earlier this afternoon — Barack Obama's campaign in Las Vegas held an early-voting promotion event at 2:15 p.m. at the Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, featuring actress/singer Bette Midler and Elaine Wynn, director of Wynn Resorts.