By the end of the early voting period, millions of North Texans have cast their ballot, though turnout still lags behind that of the 2020 elections. Meanwhile, county officials have reported few issues in the lead up to Election Day.
As of Saturday afternoon, unofficial elections records show that more than 8.77 million registered voters — or 47.1% — in the state have voted in person or by mail.
In North Texas, 44.9% of registered voters in Dallas County have cast their ballot early. Tarrant County has seen 50.3% of its registered voters so far, while turnout reached 58.2% in Collin County.
“It meets expectations,” said Bruce Sherbet, elections administrator for Collin County.
And in Rockwall, the smallest county in Texas geographically, turnout hit 60.3%.
“We definitely made a concerted effort to really socialize the idea of “Hey, don’t wait till Tuesday, go out early, take a day in that two-week window and just go get it done,” said Christopher Lynch, elections administrator for Rockwall County.
Still, he is “a little” concerned about the lines on Election Day.
“If 20,000 people are waiting to vote on Tuesday, that’s going to be a long day and probably a bad day,” Lynch said.
But based on election records, these turnout figures are still between 7 and 11 percentage points lower than those of the 2020 elections.
Lynch attributed some of these dips in general to increased misinformation around early voting. Meanwhile, Sherbet noted the last election had different circumstances: a pandemic and six extra days of early voting.
“When we now revert back to what would be a normal type of early voting period, I think we had a very good turnout,” Sherbet said.
Despite Collin County being one of the fastest-growing regions in Texas, Sherbet said that he has encountered few problems. He expects Election Day to also go smoothly, noting that the county has added more equipment, staffed up and done “a lot of training” for poll workers.
“We’re almost there,” Sherbet said. “We got through our early voting just great. … So I think we’re ready in Collin County.”
Meanwhile, the two largest counties in North Texas have faced more concerns, though elections officials looked to have successfully addressed them prior to Election Day.
Although Dallas County’s early voting period started off with technical issues and ballot mistakes, elections administrator Heider Garcia said the last two weeks have seen consistent turnout. He also said that he has noticed nothing unusual on the last day of voting.
In Tarrant County, a voter went viral online last month for saying that his paper ballot didn’t reflect his vote for president. But county officials including elections administrator Clint Ludwig attributed the issue to a common voter error instead.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has also recently chimed in to rebuff stories about voting machine fraud.
“As of today, there have been less than ten allegations of vote flipping out of nearly 7 million votes cast across the state. There has NOT BEEN A SINGLE confirmation that it actually happened,” he wrote in a Friday social media post.
With just a few days until Election Day, elections administrators are now advising voters to come prepared in order to save time at the polls.
This could mean reading sample ballots ahead of time to be informed and leaving political apparel or accessories behind as they are prohibited at voting locations. Voters can also find more information about the accessibility of voting locations in Dallas County here, and how to decide if you should mask up at the polls amid respiratory illness season here.
In addition, county officials are encouraging voters to seek out different polling stations to avoid long lines because many regions allow for countywide voting.
“We’ve been working hard on this to try to get the word out that there are different places that you can go vote,” said Lynch. “Because [people] are conditioned in this county to vote at the library, they’ll stand in that line when within a five-minute radius, there are three other locations that are less busy.”
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at hundreds of polling centers in Dallas, Collin, Tarrant and Rockwall counties.
