Welcome to

More than 500,000 voters have already cast a ballot for Tuesday’s primary. The Secretary of State’s office says that 361,000 people have taken advantage of early voting. Another 211,000 have already mailed in their absentee ballots. Secretary of State Kurt Browning is predicting a higher turnout for this election cycle compared to 2004.

“I think that it’s a convenience,” Browning said. “I think that’s really the only reason people vote is because they can vote on their time schedule and not some given date in a 12 hour period.  I don’t think it’s really been proven that it doesn’t do anything for voter turnout. These people that vote early are going to be the ones who voted on January 29th. But I do think that with the numbers we’re seeing that we will probably meet or exceed the 20 percent turnout that we had in 2004 for the presidential preference primary.”

Early voting ends Saturday.