Early Voting Continues, Except For Locke Supporters

Contrary to what the Locke campaign texted out to supporters yesterday morning - "Today is the final day for early voting" - early voting continues through Friday, Oct. 30th. Today marks the beginning of 7 AM to 7 PM early voting everyday except for Sunday which is from 1 PM to 6 PM. A map of early voting locations can be found here. If you are a Locke supporter, feel free to follow their directions and stop voting immediately.

An updated google spreadsheet with early vote totals by location through Friday can be found at this link. Voting was up at every early voting location except Tomball, which stayed equal to Thursday.

What will this weekend bring? We've had over 23,000 people vote to date in person and by mail. I know that campaigns are working hard to get their vote out, and awareness of the election is certainly rising, so I would expect today to be a big day at the polls and Sunday not so much.

But, I'm alarmed at the campaigns and political groups who are waiting to get their mail out, their slate cards out or what have you. We had pundits and journalists proclaiming about a week ago that the campaigns had only just begun. The problem with that attitude is that here we are five days into it with 23,000+ votes in the bank (actually more than that because some mail ballots are already on their way back to the County Clerk). Even if that's just 10% of the final number of voters, that number starts to grow quickly over the weekend and pretty soon it's going to be very difficult to change the course of a really big ship that is far from shore.

Having said that, there is an opportunity to sway the undecided voters which is why we are seeing so much entertaining campaign activity. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be surprised to find myself humming "Money, Money, Money, Monday . . . Money!" over the weekend while figuring out a scheme to make $640/hour.

Which brings us to the mayoral campaigns and the fun things in store this weekend. I'm hearing that Parker is going to wave a pincer at African American voters with a radio ad by State Representative Garnet Coleman starting today. From Kuff, we hear that Peter Brown is holding some sort of press conference with "numerous" supporters in Acres Home on Sunday. That might be a good idea, as the Acres Home early vote location has only contributed 2.65% of the vote total to date.

Giving some attention to the other pincer, there are rumors of a couple of Republican endorsements for Locke - one more reasonable than the other to put it mildly.

Stay tuned. And, go vote.