In case you were getting convention hungry and ready for another chaotic representation of democracy, the county convention is next Saturday and here is the Travis County info for those of you who plan on attending:

Democrats:

Sign-in begins at 7:00 a.m.

Convention convenes at 10:00 a.m.

Expect the County Convention to last until at least 7:00p.m. \

PLACE: Travis County Exposition Center, Luedecke Arena, 7311 Decker Lane
#37 Colony Park bus runs to the Expo Ctr about every 30 minutes for most of the day on Saturdays

Concession stand open from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m.
Because of the thousands of delegates and alternates that we are expecting, TCDP strongly suggests that you arrive EARLY to sign in. In years past, the TCDP has always mailed a courtesy postcard to all who were elected Delegates and Alternates out of their Precinct Conventions advising them of the County Convention. However, this year is different; we simply cannot mail out courtesy postcards. This is due to the sheer volume of people. HOWEVER, the TCDP will be contacting all the Precinct Convention Delegation Chairs, our current Travis County Democratic Precinct Chairs, local campaign organizers for the two Presidential campaigns and will also be sending out alerts via our E-Newsletter list.

AND even if you were not elected a Delegate or Alternate, the County Convention is open to the public; no charge. Anyone is welcome to attend. But only Delegates and Alternates can participate.

Parking at the Expo Center is $5, which is less than the $7 that the Palmer Events Center charged in 2006.

Republicans:

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Registration begins — 7:30 am

Call to Order — 9:00 am

Delco Activity Center

The convention will accomplish two things:

1.  

   Select as many as 164 delegates and 164 alternate delegates to represent Senatorial District 14 at the Republican State Convention in Houston on June 12, 13, & 14.

2. Adopt a Party Platform for what Republicans in Senatorial District 14 stand for. This Platform will be forwarded to the Resolutions Committee at the State Convention for consideration.

In case you have been under a rock, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in Texas last night.

Clinton got 51% of the total votes to Barack’s 48%. CNN has a great map of each county and how they voted.

Out of the 126 Delegates awarded through the actual primary:

Clinton: 65

Obama: 61

67 delegates will be awarded with the results of the caucus. The caucus numbers are still being calculated and you can get the updates throughout the day here.

Here are the caucus results thus far for our counties:

Travis (SD 14) - 73% reporting

Obama: 67%

Clinton: 32%

Williamson (SD 5) - 39% reporting

Obama: 59%

Clinton: 39%

Hays (SD 25) - 54% reporting

Obama: 57%

Clinton: 42%

Our great web team composed a map of various watch parties throughout Austin tonight.

On our KXAN website, we have set up a page where you can get up to the minute election results. We will also be live streaming the behind the scenes chaos happening, featuring yours truly. So, please tune in! That will start happening around 7pm tonight, as we get the results.

We will also have Carole Keeton Strayhorn in our offices to help us analyze what is happening. Here’s some interesting info on this “one tough grandma”

• She is the first woman to: be mayor of Austin, serve 3 consecutive terms as mayor, be elected to the Railroad Commission, be elected as Comptroller, serve as president of Austin School Board and serve as president of Austin Community College Board
• Dean Keeton street at the UT campus is named after her father, W. Page Keeton, who was dean of UT’s Law School
• During her stint as comptroller, when she married Strayhorn and changed her name again, it is reported that instead of ordering all new stationery and discarding the old, she simply crossed out “Rylander” on the existing stationery and replaced it with “Strayhorn”, as a means of saving taxpayer funds.
• She played the bit role of a Sheriff in the 1980 movie Roadie starring Meat Loaf (credited as “Carole McClellan”).
• She did special reports for KXAN back in the 1980’s!

Hello readers! While you are at work, home, wherever - I will be liveblogging the day (not minute by minute, of course, but frequently). So, check back often!

We’ve already had more than double the amount of people early voting in Travis County this presidential election than we had in 2004, when an incumbent Texan was running for prez. And, we still have three days more to go… those days usually have the largest turnouts.

Here are some quick stats:

2008 Early Voting Totals Feb 19-Feb 26th:  63,588

2004 Early Voting Totals Feb 23rd-March 5th: 30,717

2008 Breakdown of Republicans and Democrats:

Republican Primary Early Voting Totals (so far) :  10,444

Democratic Primary Early Voting Totals (so far): 53,144

Top Three Locations for Early Voting in Travis County:

1. Randall’s Research and Braker: 5,818

2. Randall’s South Mopac and William Cannon:  4,490

3. University of Texas: 4,406

Looks like we have 23,132 who have voted over the first three days.

That’s about 4 percent of Travis County’s registered voters.

Where are the crowds?

Randalls on Brodie Lane (South)

Randalls on William Cannon (South)

Randalls on Braker (North)