Early Voting Heavy in Texas and Ohio

Voters in Ohio and Texas apparently understand the importance of their vote in determining next Tuesday's primaries in Texas and Ohio. With early voting closing in Texas today, as of Wednesday, 584,994 Texans in the state's 15 most populous counties had voted Democratic. In Ohio, early voting in six of the largest counties is being compared to the turnout in the 2004 general election.

Also, a judge struck down a county's challenge to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's Jan. 2, 2008 directive requiring backup paper ballots by boards of elections using touch-screen (direct recording electronic-DRE) voting machines in the March 4 presidential primary election.

The case was brought by Union County commissioners who sought to challenge the secretary's authority to issue the directive, arguing that it unlawfully mandated two types of voting systems.
Calling the secretary's directive one that "merely directs how Union County's existing voting equipment will be used," the judge found that the county commissioners lacked standing to attack the secretary's directive and that the failure of the county board of elections to be a party deprived the court of the ability to proceed on the merits.

Meanwhile in the polls, Barack Obama holds a slight lead on Hillary Clinton in Texas and has almost pulled even in Ohio before contests that could decide their Democratic presidential battle, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Houston Chronicle poll released on Friday.

The contests on Tuesday are crucial for Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady fighting to halt Obama's streak of 11 consecutive victories in their battle for the Democratic nomination for the November 4 presidential election.

Obama, an Illinois senator, has a 6-point edge on Clinton in Texas, 48 percent to 42 percent. He trails Clinton 44 percent to 42 percent in Ohio -- well within the poll's margin of error of 3.8 percentage point