by Mehgan Sellers

Precinct Constable Maria Canchola is running for re-election in Austin. However due to the overwhelming increase in turnout for this year’s presidential election, Canchola had to completely change her campaign strategy.

“We don’t know what in the world is going to happen with all of the people that are voting for presidency,” she said. “Are they going to vote at the bottom of the ballot or not?”

Canchola’s biggest fear is not these people filling out only the top section of the ballot, but rather if they fill out the rest at random.

“A lot of people guess,” she said with a look of apprehension.

In order to increase name recognition, Canchola had to change her campaign approach.

“I have always concentrated on double-d or triple-d democrats,” she said. “Triple-ds are your best voters, and double-ds are not fair behind.”

Double-d voters are those who have voted two out of the three previous elections, triple-ds are three for three.

“We’re going to have to enlarge our range to single ds,” Canchola said, “because these people are finally geared up to vote in this election.”

She added however, “Whether they’ll vote in the next one, remains to be seen, but the interest certainly is now to vote in the presidential election.”

As a result, while last election Canchola sent out 4,000 mailers, the year she sent out 9,000.

The turn out for early voting was huge, and they are expecting even more tonight.

Canchola said that most of the people she knows are Hillary supporters. However what she said she was most surprised about was the number of Hispanic men voting for Clinton. “I’ve been very very surprised, you know with machismo Hispanic men telling me they were supporting Hillary,” she said.

However even if Obama gets the nomination, she says they’ll still be voting Democrat.

“We’re up to here with the Republicans and everything that they’ve been doing,” she said. “They don’t believe in government, but they sure do step all over the constitution.”

Canchola also expressed her frustration with the incompetence of the national officials appointed in the last eight years.

“It was very obvious when Brown got canned over Katrina that they didn’t know what they were doing, and now the whole government is structured with those kinds of people,” she said.

Katrina had a deep effect on the region when thousand of refugees were displaced to Texas