Early voting turnout strong

Carson City voters crowded the polls Friday, pushing turnout well past that of the previous non-presidential election year.

Clerk Recorder Alan Glover said the early voter turnout put Carson City on track for an 87 percent turnout this election cycle.

Glover said for a non-presidential election year that would be a very high turnout. It still won't match the 92 percent turnout in 2008 when Obama was elected. That election, 14,610 Carson residents voted early.

At 3:30 p.m. Friday, nearly every voting machine at the clerk's office was in use with more than 20 people in line waiting.

"It's been like this all day long," said Glover.

In fact, he said, voting has been steady throughout the two weeks of early voting.

"The slowest day was last Saturday - 590 - and that still was almost double what we did four years ago," he said.

Total early vote was 8,533 in 2006. That number had already been passed by nearly 1,000 as of the close of polls Thursday night.

There are 24,737 voters registered in Carson City.

According to the Elections Division website, early voting closed out at 10,782. That includes 3,920 Democrats and 5,235 Republicans. Those numbers are in about the same proportions as the major party registration in Carson.

"I don't see any advantage to either party," he said.

Statewide, there are more than 1.1 million voters registered for this election. Democrats lead in registration with 42 percent of the total. Republicans claim 36.7 percent of that number with 15.6 percent non-partisan and the rest members of minor parties.

Pointing to greater interest on the GOP side this year, Republicans had hopes of greatly out-drawing the Democrats. But that hasn't happened. In fact, as of the close of polls Thursday, more Clark County Democrats had gone to the polls than Republicans - albeit only by about 2,200, an advantage cancelled by greater GOP turnout in the north and rural counties.

Election Day polls open at 7 a.m. Tuesday.