Yesterday I reported that 1,710 Democrats had voted so far after Day 1 of Early Voting was complete. But it turns out there were 6,420 voters on the Democratic side of the Runoff. So what happened?

Elections Dept does two things when reporting Early Voting on their website. One is giving total numbers in a link under Early Voting Statistics. And they also give the actual list of voters that have already cast their vote. This list includes names, address, voter ID number, etc. It’s in a text file and is hard to read unless you upload into a database. You could use a spreadsheet and filters, but again, way easier if you have database software.  

So last night on the website they had the .txt files ready and that was all the voters they had, just the 1700. Only 152 of those voters were mail in ballots, which I thought was odd. But I shrugged it off because it is a runoff election during a pandemic. I thought that explained the low turnout. I was eager to get a report out so I worked on analysis and posted it before the sun came up. So to wake up a few hours later and see that there were actually 6420 voters was shocking to me. 

Why wouldn’t they have the entire  .txt list ready when they had already sent out lists to the Texas Democratic Party? Weeks before Early Voting started, TDP had already received a list of over 3K voters that had returned their mail in ballot. Yeah. I had no idea that was even possible. And I don’t think TDP nor Elections Dept want anyone to know. For Elections Dept, it is more work. And for TDP…well it can be strategic for the very few campaigns who know about this, if they keep it a secret. And I am sure both entities would say they weren’t keeping it a secret. But they sure as hell weren’t advertising it either.  

The website for Elections Dept and the emails from TDP are both suggestive that lists of already voted can be obtained AFTER the first day of Early Voting. But fine, let’s just say I am an idiot that should have known better, that still doesn’t explain why the full list of voters was not ready on the website at the time they released a partial list. It would make sense if they were barely allowed to start touching those ballots after the polls close on Day 1, and it was too much to count, so they only posted what they counted before heading home and they would post the rest the next day. Fine, that would make sense. But they had already released a list of over 3K voters to TDP.  So I don’t get it. But the good folks at Elections Dept assured me it won’t happen again.

Okay so that’s the explanation of what happened. Now lets do a full breakdown 

Here is the Day 1 breakdown, (with ALL the voters):

Total Democrats      6420

Total Republicans    917

Democratic Breakdown

Day 1 History (Includes mail in ballots)

Election                                    Voted Day 1      Total Early Voters           

2020 Democratic Primary         3234                  33,235   (11 days)

2018 D Primary Runoff             3643                   11,118  (5 days)

2016 D Primary Runoff            2603                     8,766  (5 days)

 

77 Newly Registered to Vote (post March 3, 2020) 

83  First time voters (Registered before March 3, never voted from 2016 onwards in any election)

5590 Voted in March 2020 Primary

3734 Voted in 2016 Primary Runoffs and/or 2018 Primary Runoffs

 

Age                Voted

18-29              103 (1.4%)

30-39            161 (2.5%)

40-49            217 (3%)

50-59            270 (4%)

60-69            1476 (23%)

70-79            2588 (41%)

80-89            1249 (20%)

90-99              268 (4%)

100+                 8   (0.1%)

Gender

Women            3555

Men                 2778

Top Precincts                                              Voted

153              (Del Valle High)                          101   

138              (Valle Verde)                               88

144             (Lomaland and I-10)                    81

92                   (Cielo Vista)                             75

19              (Good Samaratian)                       73

So this is by the far the largest day 1 of any El Paso County Primary election. It is high in  return in mail in ballots from voters age 65+. Nearly 90% of voters are over the age of 60. Voting history percentages hold the same from yesterday’s report, as the majority have participated in this past primary and other previous run off elections. Women are back on top of the count from yesterday, as womenlook to continue the trend of outvoting men in El Paso. Candidates Iliana Holguin and Yvonne Rosales are counting on a high turnout by women, so I am sure they are much happier to see the numbers in their complete form. And Commissioner Court 3 precincts are in the lead, as both Vince Perez and Iliana Holguin have been hitting the campaign trail super hard getting voters in their precincts.

If you’re using VAN, beware. They still haven’t uploaded all of Day 1 voters into the VAN database. They only have about 5K in there right now. So you will need to upload the lists from Elections Dept manually. This is odd considering they had returned ballots weeks ago, but haven’t uploaded the data made accessible on the Elections Dept website.