Early voting up in Texas

Early voting's way up in Texas — at least based on first-day results from the state's biggest counties.

Elections officials said Tuesday that more than 340,000 ballots were cast in-person or through mail once polls closed Monday in the state's 15 largest counties. That's compared to about 190,000 Texans in those same counties on the first day of 2004, the last presidential election.

In Travis County, more than 24,000 people voted Monday. By comparison, 16,139 people voted on the first day of early voting in 2004, the previous record, spokeswoman Mary Fero said. Karla, who lives in Tom Green County, a mostly Republican area said that a record was broken in that county too. Check out her comments on yesterdays entry for an excellent run down on voting and voters in that area.

Harris County had the biggest turnout, with about 39,000 of the Houston area's nearly 2 million registered voters showing up at the polls Monday.

The Texas Secretary of State's office said the numbers won't be official until after Election Day.