Texas hit yet another milestone Monday as the percent of registered voters who have cast ballots early surpassed the total early voting turnout from any other presidential election — even though the state has a little less than a week of early voting left. 46% of Texas registered voters voted early through Monday, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Texas secretary of state. In 2016, the previous high-water mark, 43.5% of registered voters cast ballots during the entire early voting period. The lion's share of the ballots — 85% -- have been cast in person. As of Monday, the raw total of votes cast through Monday was 7.8 million. That's 1.2 million more than 2016 — that total was 6.6 million. There are 1.8 million more registered voters in this cycle than four years ago. The Texas Organizing Project is a political engagement group that targets minority voters in Texas and it has been behind many of the new voter registrations. The group enlisted the help of Beto O'Rourke, the former presidential and US Senate candidate, to canvass majority minority neighborhoods in San Antonio on Tuesday. The effort was in part to help generate buzz for a Democrat running for Texas state house district 121 named Celina Montoya. O'Rourke, who's running a voter participation group called Powered by People, gave a pep talk to volunteers before they knocked on doors. ""You are doing the most important work," O'Rourke said. "Not in Bexar county, not in the state of Texas, but in the United States of America to save our democracy and to make sure that this country comes through at its moment of need," he said. The volunteers, all of whom, sat in the cars to observe social distancing guidelines, honked their horns in approval, because they weren't close enough to clap and cheer. In an interview, O'Rourke said Texas is Vice President Joe Biden's to lose, adding that engaging the state's Latino electorate is key to Democrats upsetting the normal run of order here where the GOP dominates. According to the 2010 US Census, Latinos make up close to 40% of the Texas population. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2TwO8Gm QUICKTAKE ON SOCIAL: Follow QuickTake on Twitter: twitter.com/quicktake Like QuickTake on Facebook: facebook.com/quicktake Follow QuickTake on Instagram: instagram.com/quicktake Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2FJ0oQZ Email us at [email protected] QuickTake by Bloomberg is a global news network delivering up-to-the-minute analysis on the biggest news, trends and ideas for a new generation of leaders.