The Times They are a-Changin

Bob Dylan's 1964 track 'The Times They are a-Changin' became the anthem of change for my generation.

"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall," and: "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticise what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly agin'." Early voting starts at 8AM October 20th and continues until 7PM October 31st. Please vote early this year.

The Collin County elections office had nearly 408,000 registered voters by Oct 1, 2008 with a backlog of unprocessed registration requests. Now that the Oct 6th registration deadline has passed it will take several days to possibly a couple of weeks to process the backlog of last minute registration requests. The numbers project out to as high as approximately 426,000 registered voters for the November 2008 election verses approximately 381,000 register voters for the March 2008 primary election and 369,412 register voters for the November 2004 election. (Note: this is my unofficial guesstimate of an upper end to the possible final number of registered voters for the 2008 election.)

A Dallas Morning News Story on October 6, 2008 at 08:36PM reports, "Collin County expects to have more than 410,000 voters on the rolls – up more than 11 percent from 2004."

In the November 2004 election 246,617 (66.8%) of the 369,412 register voters cast a ballot in that presidential election. 150,001, or 40.6% of 2004 registered voters, cast their ballot during early voting voting of that year.

If the same 2004 percentages of registered voters cast ballots in the 2008 November election, then 284,395 votes will be cast in the entire election and 172,979 votes will be cast during early voting in Collin County, assuming registered voter count stands at 426,000. If the voter registration count stands at just 410,000 then the projection changes to 273,713 votes cast in the entire election and 166,482 votes cast during early voting in Collin County.

On the higher end of the projections with a registration count of 426,000 voters, if there is a 80% total turnout with a 47.8% early vote turnout, then 340,800 total votes will cast for the entire election with 203,628 votes cast during early voting in Collin County. If the voter registration count stands at just 410,000 voters then the projection changes to 328,000 votes cast in the entire election and 195,980 votes cast during early voting in Collin County.

(Note: the above numbers are an unofficial guesstimate of possible 2008 voter turnout numbers based on extrapolations of 2004 Collin County voting patterns and projections of possible voter turnout percentatges reported in national newspapers. )