North Texas ends early voting with millions of ballots cast

With the early voting period now over, millions of North Texans have cast their ballots, although turnout lagged behind 2020. Meanwhile, county officials across the region have reported few problems leading up to Election Day.

Unofficial results show that as of Saturday afternoon, more than 8.77 million Texas voters — or 47.1% of registered voters — cast their ballots, either in person or by mail.

In North Texas, 44.9% of voters in Dallas County, 50.3% of voters in Tarrant County and 58.2% of voters in Collin County cast their ballots early.

“It meets expectations,” said Bruce Sherbet, elections director for Collin County.

In Rockwall County, the smallest county in Texas by area, voter turnout was 60.3%.

“We've definitely made a concerted effort to really socialize the idea of, 'Hey, don't wait until Tuesday, get out early, take a day in that two-week window and just get it done,'” said Christopher Lynch, election administrator for Rockwall County.

Still, he admits to being “a little” worried about wait times on Election Day.

“If you have 20,000 people waiting to vote on Tuesday, it’s going to be a long day and probably a bad day,” Lynch said.

Based on historical election results, voter turnout is 7 to 11 percentage points lower than in 2020.

Lynch attributed some of the decline to increasing misinformation surrounding early voting in general.

Meanwhile, Sherbet noted that the last presidential election had different circumstances: a pandemic and six additional days of early voting.

“If we now go back to a normal period of early voting, I think we had a very good turnout,” Sherbet said.

Although Collin County is one of the fastest growing regions in Texas, Sherbet said he has encountered few problems. He expects Election Day to go smoothly as well, noting that the county has added more equipment, increased staffing and conducted “a lot of training” for poll workers.

“We’re almost there,” Sherbet said. “We got through our early vote great. … So I think we’re ready in Collin County.”

Meanwhile, the two largest counties in North Texas encountered problems, although election officials appeared to have successfully resolved them before Election Day.

Although Dallas County's early voting period began with technical glitches and voting errors, elections director Heider Garcia said the last two weeks have brought consistent voter turnout. He also said he didn't notice anything unusual on the final day of early voting.

In Tarrant County, a video went viral last month in which a voter said his ballot did not reflect his vote for president. But county officials, including elections director Clint Ludwig, instead attributed the incident to a common voter error.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick also recently weighed in, dismissing stories of voting machine fraud.

“To date, there have been fewer than 10 allegations of vote fraud in the nearly 7 million votes cast statewide. There has been NOT A SINGLE confirmation that it actually happened,” he wrote in a social media post on Friday.

With just one day left until Election Day, election officials are now advising voters to come prepared to their polling station to save time.

This could mean reading sample ballots for information and leaving behind political clothing or accessories as these are prohibited at polling stations. Voters can find more information about polling place accessibility in Dallas County here and learn how to decide whether to mask at the polls during respiratory disease season here.

Additionally, in cases where statewide voting is permitted, county officials are encouraging voters to consider using a different polling location if it can avoid a long line.

“We have worked hard to get the word out that there are different places to vote,” Lynch said. “Because (people) in this county are conditioned to vote at the library, they're going to stand in that line when there are three other locations within a five-minute radius that are less busy.”

Polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at hundreds of polling locations in Dallas, Collin, Tarrant and Rockwall counties.

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