Record early voting in this election will probably push El Paso County's total turnout over 200,000 for the first time, which doesn't bode well for most of the local Republicans on the ballot in this very Democratic, straight-ticket voting county.

At the close of early voting stations Friday, county Elections Administrator Javier Chacon said, 47,551 ballots had been cast. That compares with 39,701 at the end of the fifth day of early voting in the last presidential election in 2004 and 26,652 at the same point in 2000.

Early voting now constitutes 40 to 50 percent of the total turnout, and Chacon said early voting could reach 120,000 if the rate keeps up. Early voting ends Friday.

There are 387,146 registered voters in El Paso County, but the total is always inflated, Chacon confirmed, because people who move across town or out of the county must be kept on the rolls for four years.

Credit card campaign financing

With all those people flocking to the polls, the unusually large number of El Paso Republicans on the ballot can't be feeling optimistic, especially those who are running in countywide races.

Each of the judicial candidates knows no Republican has won a judge's race since former 168th District Court Judge Ward Koehler did it in 1986.

That goes for 448th Disctrict Court Judge Chris Antcliff, a Republican who was appointed to the new court in September 2007 by Gov. Rick Perry and is facing former Municipal Court Judge Regina Arditti.

Antcliff doesn't flinch from the reality of his situation, and admitted Friday, "I expect to lose pretty good."

In the reports the candidates filed earlier this month, 30 days before the election, Antcliff raised more that Arditti, $15,815 to $7,500, but spent less, $12,518 to $16,714.

Arditti has reported spending just over $170,000 in her primary race and runoff and general election races. One thing really stands out in her campaign finance totals: Of the $170,116 she has reported spending, she has only raised $27,223 in outside contributions.

The issue arose last week when she was being interviewed on KHRO-AM by Barbara Perez, and Arditti reportedly said she was using credit cards to finance most of her campaign.

The last time I heard that was from former County Judge Dolores Briones, who once told me she financed much of her first campaign with credit cards in 1998 and lived off them as well leading up to the time she took office. Why? She simply didn't have a job.

The fact that she was unable to pay off that debt caused Briones a lot of grief and embarrassment over the years. She even went to the county salary grievance committee to make her case for a raise as the lowest paid county judge of a major county in Texas, and played on being Hispanic, female and a single mother.

The largely Hispanic female committee didn't buy it and wouldn't give her a cent. The story was a group of big business people locally finally bailed her out. That scenario raises all kinds of questions about the price she might have had to pay.

So, back to Arditti.

I think I started getting calls before the Perez show was over from people alarmed that a district judge candidate was going miles in debt to get elected and wasn't disclosing it on her campaign finance reports.

She thanked God she has good credit.

Well, according to the Texas Ethics Commission, she would have to report a loan to her campaign but not her credit card indebtedness to finance a campaign, one tank of gas and one Jack in the Box meal at a time.

When I reached her by phone to ask about it, she said "most of it was personal funds and some on credit cards."

Arditti is back in private practice now after resigning earlier this year from her position as the city's presiding municipal judge, a full-time job that only pays $45,000 a year.

After the election, she will have until March 2009 to take limited campaign contributions and use them to repay herself. If her credit card debt is large, it won't be easy.