By the time almost half of the registered voters in Texas woke up on Election Day on Tuesday, they had already cast a ballot.
The rest still had a task ahead of them.
Veronica Esaki waited until Election Day to head to the polls so she could vote with her husband, who had been traveling for the past few weeks.
Her biggest reason for voting was to prevent former President Donald Trump from taking office again, although she doesn’t particularly trust politicians in general, she said. The delay was certainly not, she said, because she couldn’t make up her mind between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I don’t have affiliation with either parties, but I vote alternatively every election because I believe freedom and democracy should be based on alternation of power,” Esaki said. “If you just have one party ruling, you don’t have freedom.”
Esaki and her husband Edson, who are both 65, got in their ballots just under the wire — about half an hour before the polls closed at Haggard Library in Plano.
Texas was still hours away from final turnout totals when the polls closed at 7 p.m. A record number of early voters, however, combined with reports of lines and crowds at polling sites on Tuesday could signal a strong showing at the close of one of the most contentious election cycles in recent memory.
An estimated 9 million Texans cast early votes in the two weeks leading up to the election, comprising nearly half of the state’s 18.6 million registered voters — a record number of registrations and an increase of some 1.7 million from the 2020 election, according to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson.
Texans typically vote early in higher numbers than they do on Election Day, but this year’s early turnout already surpasses the total number of ballots cast in the state in almost every other presidential election in history.
The only exception: the 2020 election, when voting was made easier so that people could socially distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, and turnout rose as a result.
Nationally, some 80 million people have voted early — just over half the total number of votes in the 2020 election, according to the Associated Press.
Voting on Election Day
On Tuesday, voters turned out under brisk, sunny skies across most of Texas. Naturalized citizens and retired locals, young business owners and first-time voters turned out at elementary schools and convention centers, firehouses and community centers.
Some waited for the better part of an hour to vote, while others managed to escape the crowds and slide into the booths during the final moments of Election Day.
North Dallas business owners Morgan Perry, 30, and Devyn Overton, 33, waited exactly 37 minutes from the time they got in line to the moment they walked out of the doors of their polling site at Anne Frank Elementary School.
They know because Overton timed it.
The pair, who own a mineral and geode business in North Dallas, said it was primarily women’s rights and human rights that brought them to the polls.
Overton said he voted for U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, for the Texas Senate seat and wants to see more Democrats on the Texas Supreme Court.
“I think people don’t realize how important that is — it’s not just about the president or your senator, it’s the little guys that matter the most,” Perry said. “People are really big on the abortion ban that happened, but they don’t realize that was the Texas Legislature that did that.”
Kumar Palani, 44, and his wife Abi Senthil, 35, voted Tuesday afternoon at Frisco Fire Station #5, where wait times of more than 45 minutes were reported throughout the morning.
Palani and Senthil, naturalized citizens who had never voted in the U.S., were lucky enough to get there for their first time after the lines died down.
“It’s [a] democratic country. Even before we became U.S. citizens, we voted in India,” Palani said. “We don’t see any issues, but we wanted to do our democratic duty.”
Adesola Osobu walked to the polls to cast his first ballot as an American citizen.
The 35-year-old North Dallas resident moved to the United States from Nigeria in 2009 and said he wanted to utilize his civic rights after recently becoming a citizen.
Osobu, who works in tech for a healthcare company, said he wasn’t a particularly strong supporter of either candidate and followed his heart when voting, a decision he chose to keep private.
He encouraged everyone who is able to vote and express their voice.
“Where I’m from, voting is not as nice as this,” he said. “There are people trying to rig the election and all that, but out here it’s nice [and] calm.”
Elections officials and voting advocates said they were encouraged by an enthusiastic electorate they hoped would continue the early voting streak.
Some 3,551 people cast their votes at the new presidential polling place hosted by the nonprofit For Oak Cliff, a grassroots community center located in an impoverished Dallas neighborhood, said organization director Tyler Toynes. Most of them voted early, but the people were “coming in and out constantly” all day long, he said.
At the end of an exhausting run, Toynes was grateful and proud.
“Hearing voters leave and saying this was the best voting location they’ve been to was a testament to our election team and the For Oak Cliff staff,” Toynes told The Dallas Morning News. “It’s truly a blessing to the community to have an additional place to exercise their right to vote.”
The highlight of his election season, even after all those wins? Watching his grandmother vote at the polling place he helped bring to the community.
”My granny always talked to me about the importance of casting your vote,” Toynes said. “She’s in her 80s and still is out working to get people registered.”
The first ballots from election day arrived at Dallas County Elections headquarters about 8:40 p.m. Tuesday from 12 polling places. County staff checked the chain of custody as poll watchers from both parties observed.
The process wasn’t instantaneous. But as Heider Garcia, the county elections administrator, explained, the ballots make several stops on their way to get counted.
At each precinct, poll workers complete close-out paperwork once every person in line has had a chance to vote, Garcia said. Then the paper ballots, a thumb drive of vote counts and certification materials are brought to regional collection facilities around the county.
Garcia said the workers from the regional facilities bring materials over to the central count facility in batches, which are then processed and uploaded to the unofficial results page about every hour.
After polls closed in Collin County, more than a dozen volunteers could be seen carting ballots into the elections office in McKinney.
Bruce Sherbet, the county election’s administrator, said he expects about a 69% voter turnout this year, adding that 516,196 people in Collin County submitted a ballot this year, 76,885 of whom voted on Election Day.
Retail and wholesale business owner Ashok Barot was among the 15% of Collin County voters who cast ballots on Election Day. Barot, who spoke with The News after voting at Davis Library in Plano, identified himself as Indian American and a Republican and said foreign relations and the economy were top of mind for him.
“I’ve been following the Republican Party since last time, and I like the party,” he said.
Musibau Adedoyin, 45, was one of the last people who voted at Haggard Library. Adedoyin, an engineer, said he rushed over to the library after work.
“My wife is still waiting in the car right now,” he said.
Adedoyin said he got his citizenship earlier this year and was “excited” to be able to vote in his first U.S. elections. He declined to say who he voted for, but said public safety and high taxes are important issues for him and his family.
“It’s good for me to know who the next president is going to be and who is going to move this country forward,” he said.
Early vote wave boosts turnout
One in 5 early voters in Texas this cycle had not even voted in the 2020 election, according to Austin political data researcher Derek Ryan. More than 1 in 3 lived in the suburbs, he said.
Sherbet said he was surprised by the lack of long lines at the end of Election Day.
“I think what happened is, if you look at the numbers, about 85% of the votes cast were early, which really helps,” he said.
Those critical early voters included Eric Nickason, 30, a first-time voter in Collin County who voted early because of his work schedule.
A resident of the rapidly growing suburb of Princeton, northeast of Dallas, Nickason said he was moved to the polls after years of abstaining thanks to the amount of political “tension” he has seen on social media.
“I’m not super deep into politics, but I have seen more than I have in the past,” Nickason said.
State Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat running for reelection in Texas House District 70, said she saw an increase in early voter turnout.
“I have been voting at this library for 15 years and I have never seen it so busy, so vibrant,” Plesa said while greeting voters Friday at the Renner Frankford Branch Library in Dallas. “People are super excited to vote and it’s everybody, all different cultures, all different age groups.”
Steve Kinard, the Republican challenging Plesa for her seat, said he has been impressed by the increase in the number of Republican early voters this year. He also said he thinks younger conservative voters are “rallying” around this year’s election.
“We’ve really shattered this notion that Republicans don’t vote early,” Kinard said.
Ruben Martinez, 47, is doing his part to smash that image. He’s voted in presidential elections before and wanted to vote early this time to set an example to fellow GOP voters.
“I heard that it’s more likely that [early voting] happens on the Democratic side and thought this would encourage other Republicans to go vote early,” Martinez said.