Early voting in parish exceeds 2012 election

The early voting period for the upcoming November 8th election, highlighted by the Presidential Race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, exceeded the early-voting total cast four years ago in Evangeline Parish.
A total of 3,221 residents cast their votes in person at the Evangeline Parish Registrar of Voters office inside the parish courthouse during the early voting period, which concluded on Tuesday.
That is 411 more in-person votes than the early voting period for the 2012 Presidential Election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. In fact, the 3,221 in-person votes also surpasses the grand total of early votes from 2012, which includes both in-person voting and absentee voting.
“This is about what I expected,” Registrar of Voters Lucas Buller said. “I also absolutely expect it to be a large turnout on Tuesday. I am thinking we are going to have roughly 70 percent turnout in the parish.”
This year’s early voting though falls short of the massive turnout for the 2008 election between Barack Obama and John McCain which saw 3,833 votes cast in person, and another 378 done as absentee votes. In addition to the historic nature of the Presidential Race, that early voting period was also aided by local races such as the Ward 1 School Tax, District Attorney’s race and City Marshal.
In addition to the race for the White House, parish voters will be casting votes for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Public Service Commissioner and six Constitutional Amendments.