WILL HIGH VOTER TURNOUT BE ENOUGH? GO VOTE!

Tennesseans through Saturday cast nearly 406,213 early and absentee ballots during the state’s first four days of early voting in the Nov. 6 midterm election, according to the Secretary of State’s website.

Georgia, too, has been seeing incredibly high early voter turnout with nearly three times (as of Friday) the number of people who voted in comparable days during the 2014 midterm elections.

Those upswings are in keeping with increases in midterm early voting across the country.

It’s a welcome change in America and hopefully a good sign for Democrats hoping to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and perhaps (we cross our fingers) the Senate as well.

If history is an indication, Democrats generally win when voter turnout is high. Recent polling looks promising, too.

For many years, polling from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal has measured midterm voter interest on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 being the highest. They call it “political intensity.”

This year’s results found that 72 percent of self-identified Democrats are very interested in this year’s elections, gauging their interest at a 9 or 10, while 68 percent of self-identified Republicans said the same.

In 2006, according to MSNBC, those numbers were 69 percent Dems to 56 percent GOP, and voters punished the George W. Bush presidency by giving Democrats control of both the House and Senate. In 2010, it was the hyper interested GOP — 74 percent to 54 percent — that regained control of the House. In the 2014 midterms, the Republicans touted a 59 percent to 47 percent interest, and Democrats lost the Senate majority. Then-president Barack Obama called the red wave “a shellacking.”

Tennessee, in that 2014 midterm election, had only about a fourth as many early voters — 92,515 — as it has seen in comparable days this year. And in Hamilton County this year, about 20,036 people voted in just four days — almost as many as the 21,128 who voted here in all of the 14 days of early voting four years ago.

That’s not bad for the county which during the August primary election had the fifth-most registered voters among Tennessee’s 95 counties but also ranked 95th — dead last — in turnout with just 8.41 percent of registered voters casting early ballots.

There is no doubt that the stakes of this election are high — both in the country and in our states.

Both Tennessee’s Senate race and Georgia’s gubernatorial race are virtually tied, according to recent polls.

In Tennessee, a make-or-break Senate seat is on the line. Can Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen win the open seat of retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Chattanooga over Trumpite U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn?

In Georgia, does the high early turnout indicate Georgia voters are enthusiastic about the state’s governor’s race between Democrat Stacey Abrams, who could be the nation’s first black female governor, and Republican Brian Kemp, another Trumpite who campaigned with a gun and big truck, saying he drove the truck so he could pick up “illegals” and deport them?

Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state who is in charge of overseeing the very election in which he’s running, has pushed policies that make it harder for people to vote. Several civil rights organizations are suing him to stop Georgia from enforcing a law that has put more than 53,000 voter registrations on hold — most of them minorities.

David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote an extremely depressing column Sunday: “What if the Republicans win everything again?”

Here’s Leonhardt’s short list: A red wave would mean the end of Robert Mueller’s investigation, the loss of health insurance for several million people, new laws that make it harder to vote, more tax cuts for the rich, more damage to the environment and a Republican Party molded even more in the image of President Trump.

“It would embolden Trump to push even harder toward the America he wants — where corporate oversight is scant, climate change is ignored, voting rights are abridged, health care is a privilege, judicial independence is a fiction and the truth is whatever he says it is,” Leonhardt writes.

Leonhardt worries that even with more Democrats showing up to vote, it may not be enough. The combination of gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic voters in major cities may mean that a popular-vote win won’t automatically translate into a House majority. And a Democratic win in the Senate already is thought to be an uphill battle.

Already registered voters can cast early ballots through Nov. 1.

Go vote. Even if someone turns you away from the polls, insist on a provisional ballot. Make the effort. Our future, and the future of our country, is at stake.