LUBBOCK, Texas — The Lubbock County Elections Administrator, Dorothy Kennedy said early voting turnout is less than expected for a primary presidential election.
“Right now we’re a little lower than we’ve been seeing in previous like elections–other presidentials,” Kennedy said.
As of Monday evening, nearly a week after the start of early voting, 11,099 people have voted–hundreds less than at this time in 2016. This comes as turnout across the nation and the state is on the rise.
“At the federal level and the state, Secretary of State’s level, they were expecting for all of us to have a larger turnout, so we haven’t gotten the turnout we expected here in Lubbock County at this point,” Kennedy said.
In 2016, there were more than 155,000 registered voters, with more than 25 thousand people voting. In 2020, however, there are 176,000 registered voters in Lubbock.
“We have the District Judge race, which is contested and we have a couple of Commissioner’s precincts that are contested but outside of that there’s not a lot of things that our ballots on both the Democrat and Republican primaries,” Kennedy said.
The administrator said she hopes more voters will come out in the next few days as well as Super Tuesday.
“We’re hoping that people are just kind of waiting through and studying the sample ballots that are up on our website, and that they’ll be ready to go out and finish strong these last four days of early voting and then election day March the third,” Kennedy said.
The last day to vote early is Friday, Feb. 28. The polls will close at 8 p.m.
For more information about early voting, locations, and sample ballots, visit the Lubbock County Elections Office website.
