With early voting wrapping up today, the percentage of active Summit County Republicans who have voted is just slightly ahead of that of Democrats.

In Summit County, just over 28 percent of active Republicans and just under 25 percent of Democrats had voted as of Thursday morning.

Summit County vote counts as of Thursday followed a statewide trend of higher early voting percentages from Republicans. More than 32 percent of active Republicans in Colorado had returned ballots by Wednesday afternoon, compared with less than 30 percent of active Democrats, The Associated Press reported.

But when it comes to the actual number of early votes returned by each party, the Summit County Democrats are in the lead. By Thursday morning, Democrats had turned in 1,280 ballots through early and mail-in voting, leading the GOP's 1,225 votes cast.

Unaffiliated voters had cast 1,113 ballots as of Thursday, representing participation from approximately 14 percent of all active unaffiliated voters in Summit County.

Across the board, the number of early voters in Summit County is somewhat low for this stage in the election process. By Thursday morning approximately 1,300 people in Summit County had early voted, 700 fewer than the total number that cast early votes in 2006, the last midterm election.

“(The number) is very surprising,” Summit County Clerk and Recorder Kathy Neel said. “I thought it would be more.”

Part of the fall-off in early voting could be related to an increase in the number of voters casting mail-in ballots. Of an estimated 5,500 mail ballots sent out, 2,300 have been returned, compared with only 2,100 total in the 2006 election. Traffic to the polls also tends to pick up during the last few days of early voting.

3B impact

A low voter turnout in certain demographics might not bode well for supporters of the 3B ballot measure, which would extend part of an expiring mill levy to provide funding for the Summit School District. Supporters will likely need parents of school aged children to make it to the polls to get the measure passed.

“We are a bit concerned,” said Sue Wilcox, chair of Citizens for Strong Summit Schools. “We are watching the ballots come in and the demographic we've identified as kind of our supporters, the showing thus far is weaker than we had hoped. Of course, not knowing how the people who voted early have voted, our sense is we should be concerned.”

As of Wednesday morning, 648 voters age 46 and younger had voted, while 2,353 people age 47 and up had cast their votes.

The 3B campaign has reached out to various neighborhoods encouraging voters to mail in their ballots in time and will have additional campaign activities through the weekend. But for many parents, getting to the polls is a matter of finding the time.

“We know everyone's really busy,” Wilcox said. “Any parent who has kids in school, in activities (is) busy and it does take time to vote. We recognize that, but we want to turn all of the support we feel in the county into actual voting.”

Several private preschools in the county have agreed to let children stay a little late to help make it to the polls on Election Day.

“If we have phone calls of parents saying (they're) going to vote right now, we'll be a little more forgiving (of late pick-ups),” said Morgan Thompson, assistant director of Little Red School House in Breckenridge. “We do believe that it's important that everybody goes out there and votes.”

Little Red School House, the Carriage House, Timberline Learning Center and Summit County Preschool will make allowances for parents who need to pick children up late Tuesday due to voting.

Early voting ends today at 5 p.m. Mail-in ballots must be received by the Clerk and Recorder by 7 p.m. Tuesday.

SDN reporter Caddie Nath can be contacted at (970) 668-4628 or at cnath@summitdaily.com