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Heavy turnout noted in early voting

Nearly 10 percent of Acadia's voters cast their ballots in advance of Nov. 4 primary

Steve Bandy is the managing editor of The Crowley Post-Signal. He can be reached at steve.bandy@crowleytoday.com or 337-783-3450.

Second in turnout only to the 2008 presidential election, early voting for the Nov. 4 primary election closed Tuesday afternoon with roughly 8.8 percent of the total registered voters in Acadia Parish casting ballots.

During the seven days of early voting, a total of 2,908 residents visited the Acadia Parish Registrar of Voters’ office in person to cast ballots. Another 548 mail-in ballots had been received as of Wednesday morning, the day after early voting closed.

Billie J. Meyer, registrar, explained that mail-in ballots (which were sent out on Oct. 7) will be accepted through Monday, Nov. 3 — through Tuesday, Election Day, for military.

“For the presidential election in 2008, we had 3,877 early votes cast in the parish,” said Meyer. “This year, as of this morning, we’ve had 3,416 (counting Wednesday’s mail). That only a difference of about 400.”

Crowley voters posted the largest turnout, both in numbers and percentages, during early voting with 1,165 or the city’s 8,252 registered voters — or 14.1 percent — casting ballots.

Rayne, where every municipal seat with the exception of city judge is contested, was next with 737 of 5,617 voters — or 13.1 percent — voting early.

A further breakdown of the last week’s turnout shows that more women voted than men and more Democrats cast ballots than all other parties combined.

Of the 3,416 that have voted so far, 1,751 were female while 1,665 were male.

Turning to party affiliation, 1,896 registered Democrats cast early ballots. That represents 55.5 percent of the early votes cast. Republican turnout was 1,050 (30.7 percent) and 470 (13.8 percent) listed their party affiliation as “other.”

Records also indicate that white voters overwhelmingly outnumbered any other race when it came to early voting this year.

A total of 2,696 white voters cast ballots as compared 691 black and 29 “other” voters.

Polls will open at 6 a.m. Tuesday and will close at 8 p.m.

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