Voter count goes up

The number of registered Clovis voters has gone up in the weeks since a referendum election was approved for the city’s affordable housing plan.

But Curry County officials don’t think there’s anything that clearly connects new registrations to the city’s Aug. 2 election. Tuesday was the final day voters could register to cast ballots in the election.

The number of registered voters living in Clovis stands at 16,434. That’s up 202 voters, or 1.2 percent, from the 16,232 eligible for the May 3 referendum election on a .25 percent gross receipts tax increase.

Stephanie Hicks, an elections coordinator with the Curry County clerk’s office, which keeps voter rolls, said many of those registrations came from the state Motor Vehicle Department.

The county, she said, received 53 registrations from the MVD, which normally registers people who are either new in town or changing an address.

Absentee balloting is ongoing, and early voting runs July 13-29 at city hall. Polls will be open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Aug. 2. Precincts will be the same as the ones used in the May 3 referendum election, with the exception that Precinct 24 voters will vote at Yucca Middle School instead of Living Stones Community Church.

In the previous referendum election, 2,310 people voted, with the tax increase approved on a 1,265-1,045 count.

Of the city’s 16,434 voters, 7,456 are registered Republicans, 6,057 are registered Democrats, 2,885 declined to state party affiliation and 36 declared another party affiliation.