Election department officials across Texas are enjoying large turnout numbers this week — and they know there's more to come thanks to the extended early voting period. More than 2.6 million Texans, about 15% of everyone registered in the state, voted as of Thursday.
Bexar County has seen 108,707 people turn out for in-person early voting as of Thursday night, not including mail-in ballots (about 56,000 according to the Texas Secretary of State's website).
With two weeks left, voters are on track to meet or surpass the total number of early ballots from 2016: 475,999. On Election Day in 2016, just an additional 122,692 voters came to the polls. About 57% of those registered voted in the Bexar County 2016 General Election.
Now, there are a record number of registered voters in the county: 1,181,842. With early and mail-in ballots counted so far, about 13% of registered Bexar County voters have cast ballots.
Travis County is also seeing an impressive turnout, with 16% of registered people having voted so far. KUT in Austin reports their in-person ballots are on par with 2016 data, but mail-in ballot numbers are doubled.
About 11% of registered voters in Travis County voted by the first two days of early voting in Texas.
— KUT Austin (@KUT) October 15, 2020
That’s more than 95,000 mail-in and in-person ballots cast — thousands more than at this point during the 2016 presidential election. | @AshLopezRadio https://t.co/MulrZtQ1M6
Over in Houston, voter turnout records are being broken. More than 100,000 votes have been cast each day of early voting between Tuesday and Thursday.
Harris County has also seen voter turnout at 16% so far.
Third record-breaking day of early voting in Harris County = 348,000 total votes. (That’s roughly the population of Galveston County.) #HarrisVotes #TXDecides #earlyvote #earlyvotingtexas pic.twitter.com/FCuLtrkYQ8
— Elizabeth Trovall (@elizTrovall) October 16, 2020
North Texas is experiencing large turnout as well, and many people are voting for the first time.
Almost 15% of Dallas County voters have cast ballots as of Thursday.
18-yr-old @IzcanOrdaz & his 20-yr-old sister @citipop just voted in their first presidential election! They joined their dad, Simon, in Fort Worth. #every30seconds @keranews @TheWorld pic.twitter.com/h62tnysVfp
— Stella M. Chávez (@stellamchavez) October 15, 2020
Still, there are many Texans who wanted to vote by mail, but couldn't because of strict state rules. Early voting in Texas started on Tuesday this week, and will last until Oct. 30.
Check out TPR's voting guide for more information.
