Back Talk Far North Dallas

Early voting final tally

How does 477,455 sound? That’s about 125,000 more than voted early in 2004, and almost twice as many as voted early in 2000.

A couple of other numbers to keep in mind: There are about 1.2 million registered voters in Dallas County. In 2004, turnout was 58 percent, and half voted early. If that pattern holds, we’ll have 80 percent turnout tomorrow. I’m not sure anyone, anywhere, has ever had 80 percent turnout. More realistically, I think we can expect early voting this year to account for about two-thirds of the total. Even then, we’d get close to 60 percent turnout, which is about what the national projections are.

Who will all these people help? The county Democrats think it’s going to be them, though their projections on Friday in the Observer are less than the number who actually voted. On the other hand, as I have noted, early voters in Dallas County traditionally favor Republicans.

Finally, after the jump, a few fun facts about just how many people voted early, which you can share if you have to stand in line tomorrow to vote.

Leppert says our votes count. Except for the convention center hotel?

Here's an interesting juxtaposition: Mayor Tom Leppert is circulating an email with the top headline saying "Convention Center Hotel Critical to Dallas' Future", while the second item is headlined "Vote! It's Your Voice!" (Click here to download tom_leppert_email.pdf and see the email.)

The irony: At least one Leppert spokespuppet on the council already has chortled out loud that even if Dallas residents vote in favor of a potential referendum scuttling the $550 million taxpayer-owned convention center hotel downtown, those votes won't stop the council from moving forward to build the hotel.

So whose voice is Leppert talking about?

Fretz Park early voting: things get heated between voters

I voted early at Fretz Park during a lunch break last week, and was able to do it with time to spare for a quick sandwich. But it seems not everyone has been getting in and out of the voting center without incident. Yesterday melee broke out between voters (and allegedly one of the candidates) at Fretz Park--DMN has the full scoop on what exactly went down.

Early voting update II

Forget records –- we’re past that. Through Friday, more than 212,000 people had voted early in Dallas County. That’s an astounding number, for several reasons:

• The county averaged more than 40,000 early voters a day last week. At that rate, we’ll have more than 400,000 early voters, double the number in the 2000 presidential election. In 2000, turnout was about 50 percent -– some 600,000 voters. And here’s an interesting conundrum: Early voting, as near as I can tell, often makes up about one-third of the total votes cast. At this rate, if the current average holds, we’ll have close to 100 percent turnout.

Tom Leppert: 'Doesn't give a darn about the citizens of Dallas'

So, do you think Mayor Tom Leppert cares about the citizens of Dallas or not? Councilman Mitchell Rasansky tells the Observer Leppert doesn't care — "doesn’t give a darn about the citizens of Dallas". Rasansky goes on to mention that Leppert was on the board of directors of Washington Mutual even as that financial institution bit the dust, saying Leppert's comments about WaMu's financial health a few weeks prior to its bailout — “the feeling is that there's sufficient capital and good things ahead" — is indicative of Leppert's go-for-broke actions with the convention center hotel, regardless of a possible pending referendum on the project and a disintegration of the bond market. It's worth clicking on the post, written by Sam Merten, because it has a whole list of interesting information and story links. As for me, I tend to think that it's not that Leppert doesn't care about the rest of us. I think he just believes he knows better than everyone else what's good for us. Come to think of it, that was the prevailing attitude on Wall Street for a few years, too, and look what happened to those guys...

Early voting update

All those stories and numbers about how many people are voting early? Apparently, they’re true. I waited in line on Tuesday for the first time since I started voting early, and there were about a half dozen people in line with me at 8:45 a.m. Plus, not only there were more people voting -– about a dozen, instead of two or three -– but twice as many polling workers as well. And it was one of the best-run operations I have ever seen.

The numbers, through Tuesday, suggest a massive turnout not seen in years, if not decades. Monday’s total was a record for one day, and through two days more than 50,000 votes have been cast. That’s about one-seventh of the total for early voting in 2004, and we still have eight days to go. State officials, meanwhile, expected the first day to beat records throughout Texas. And we didn’t do as well, proportionally, as some states -– more than 200,000 have voted early in North Carolina. Also important: We had record early voting in the Democratic primary in March, and the total was 119,885. We’ll probably pass that figure this week.

I long ago stopped trying to figure out whether early voting benefits particular candidates, but what is worth noting this time is that it’s a sign of heavy turnout, and heavy turnout makes polls less reliable. (Polling accuracy throughout the 2008 primary and general election campaigns has been abysmal, and no one is quite sure why.) Another kicker this year is the number of new voters; registration is up more than 100,000 in Dallas County. Again, it’s not as important who the new voters will favor, but that their presence makes the polls less reliable.

Remember, if you want to share your early voting experience, you can do it in the comments.

Technorati Tags: Early voting,presidential election,Dallas County,voter turnout

The Dallas County sheriff’s race

I have been writing about politics for more than 20 years, and this race seemed as easy to handicap as any over the past two decades. Incumbent Democrat Lupe Valdez has more baggage than a 747, and the challenger, Republican Lowell Cannaday, if unspectacular, seems mostly non-partisan with a squeaky clean record.

So why does it look like Valdez might actually win?

Victory after 10 years: Iconic but not helping downtown

Not long ago, the DMN published a series of stories titled "Partial Victory", which was a rather ingenious way of highlighting the big, new "Times Square for Dallas" surrounding the American Airlines Center downtown. The good news, according to the story: Ross Perot Jr. says that Victory is farther along, development-wise, than he thought it would be at this time. The bad news: Apparently, if you don't live there (and not many people do), you don't know what's happening at Victory and you aren't participating in terms of spending money.

As it stands now, about 10 years into what Hillwood describes as a 25-year process, there are about 13 restaurants, a dozen retailers, more than 750 residential units and quite a bit of office space, including WFAA-TV's Times Square-like station on a corner near the AAC. But the place has become more upscale, to the exclusion of everything else, than the developers apparently planned, so while it's easy to find a $1,500 hotel room and a $400 dress, you can't find an inexpensive lunch, a drugstore or a grocery store, according to the News.

Interestingly enough, that's the same complaint that the people living and working downtown — and I mean the original downtown — have, too. And it's interesting to remember that one of the sales pitches we were given when the developers floated the $230 million arena bond in 1998 was that Victory was an important step in downtown's revitalization. As we can see now, that hasn't been the case — the distance between Main Street and Victory is too far for the average person to make the walk, and whatever good is happening at Victory isn't trickling over to downtown.

Early voting starts today

Time, date and place information is here. I’ll update the vote totals and offer some analysis a couple of times before early voting ends on Oct. 31. I’ll also put up an early voting post a couple of times each week; anyone who votes early can make a comment there. I’ll vote early Tuesday and report back then.

Double check the list of early voting locations, because there have been several changes. I’m assuming that’s because the previous sites aren’t big enough to handle the record number of early voters that the county is expecting.

Technorati Tags: early voting. presidential election,Dallas County

Convention center hotel update: Check out the model we paid for

You have to hand it to the Go Hotel people — they're not going to let anything like a potential public smackdown stop them from fulfilling their promise to bring a taxpayer-owned convention center hotel to downtown Dallas. Sam Merten with the Observer points out that Thursday's unveiling of a model of the hotel shows that, public backing or not, they're going to start building a hotel.

Merten's story makes a couple of interesting points. One, the people at Matthews Southwest — the builder "we" have selected for this project — are being realistic about what's going on. Jack Matthews told Merten that by the time a May referendum on the project comes around, at most about $10 million will have been spent readying the site, working up plans and demolishing a parking structure already there (I used to park in that two-story structure when going to Mavs games at Reunion Arena). So for all of the bluster about "pushing forward" with the hotel, no matter what happens with the referendum, Matthews' comment shows this is a pretty empty statement. Leaving another $10 million on the table, assuming the referendum passes, is a drop in the bucket for this $550 million-plus deal.

Second, the pictures of the model itself, along with the computer renderings published in the Observer, are pretty anti-climactic. For a monstrous hotel that Mayor Tom Leppert bragged would and should be iconic, this one seems pretty straight-forward. No stunning visual architecture (like nearby City Hall, for example). No cutting-edge futuristic design. No throw-back to anything else downtown, either. It's just a big, tall glass-sheathed building. (If you really want to see something iconic, check out this link on Matthews' website; it's a picture of a 58-story project the company is building in Canada.)

I guess to a builder like Leppert, who was merely paid to build things in his past career rather than actually designing them, this thing is iconic. I just don't see it, though. For $550 million, I expected something blow-away cool, and this just isn't it. Maybe we need to bring Calatrava in on this deal, too...