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Early Voting Brings High Turnout To The Polls

Tricia Schwennesen
/
Texas Public Radio

Tuesday was the last day of early voting. Mayor Ivy Taylor cast her ballot at the Claude Black Center  where she says she votes in every election.

“We certainly want everyone to come out and have their voices heard,” Taylor said.

Taylor wasn’t the only one to come out. There was a steady stream of voters walking into Lions Field. Peggy Jo Kendall lives on the near North Side. She says the mayoral and the bond election are what brought her here Tuesday.

“With all of the improvements that are being considered,” Kendall said. “The amount of that. I’m recently unemployed. I’m over 70 years old. The tax impact of that bond, all the improvements, the propositions that are involved are significant.”

Jeanna Ryden says she wants integrity and consistency in city government.

“The issue I care most about is for the people who are on City Council who come out very pro some of the projects or very anti some of the projects but never vote, so there’s never a record of where they really stand,” Ryden said.

Jacque Callanen is the Bexar County Elections Administrator. She says by 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon the county was already up six thousand votes more than the last high set during early voting in 2015.

 

Louisa Jonas is an independent public radio producer, environmental writer, and radio production teacher based in Baltimore. She is thrilled to have been a PRX STEM Story Project recipient for which she produced a piece about periodical cicadas. Her work includes documentaries about spawning horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Louisa previously worked as the podcast producer at WYPR 88.1FM in Baltimore. There she created and produced two documentary podcast series: Natural Maryland and Ascending: Baltimore School for the Arts. The Nature Conservancy selected her documentaries for their podcast Nature Stories. She has also produced for the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Distillations Podcast. Louisa is editor of the book Backyard Carolina: Two Decades of Public Radio Commentary. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her training also includes journalism fellowships from the Science Literacy Project and the Knight Digital Media Center, both in Berkeley, CA. Most recently she received a journalism fellowship through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she traveled to Toolik Field Station in Arctic Alaska to study climate change. In addition to her work as an independent producer, she teaches radio production classes at Howard Community College to a great group of budding journalists. She has worked as an environmental educator and canoe instructor but has yet to convince a great blue heron to squawk for her microphone…she remains undeterred.