Harris County Sets Midterm Record on First Day of Texas Early Voting

Texans in the state’s largest counties turned out in large numbers Monday on the first day of early voting for the November 3 election, and Harris County set a first-day record for a midterm, according to the counties’ own unofficial tallies.

Harris County checked in 104,659 voters in person on Monday, its election records show, along with 24,794 mail ballots received so far. The previous first-day record for a midterm was 63,188, set in 2018, according to the Harris County Elections Department, as reported by FOX 26.

County by county

Dallas County recorded 76,243 in-person voters on the first day, according to the county’s unofficial daily report. Tarrant County recorded 50,409, up from 29,197 on the first day in 2022, NBC DFW reported.

In Bexar County, more than 42,000 people voted Monday, about 32 percent more than on the first day in 2022, according to the Bexar County Elections Department, as reported by Texas Public Radio.

Travis County counted 40,777 in-person voters and 8,358 mail ballots received, for a running total of 49,175. That is 5.18 percent of the county’s 948,575 registered voters after one day.

El Paso County recorded 17,517 in-person voters and 4,896 returned mail ballots. El Paso Matters reported that the in-person count was the highest for the first day of any midterm in the county.

The Secretary of State’s statewide roster for Monday, built from files the counties upload, was still incomplete Tuesday afternoon. It listed 512,240 voters from 222 of the state’s 254 counties, but only a handful of the in-person voters that Harris, Tarrant, Collin and El Paso counties reported on their own.

The registration backlog

The first day of voting followed weeks of trouble with the state’s voter rolls. Two voting groups sued the Secretary of State and the Texas Department of Public Safety this month over registrations submitted through the department’s online portal that never reached county election offices. The state later sent counties a backlog of at least 500,000 records, The Texas Tribune reported. A second state software error held up about 15,000 address updates, which counties received four days before polls opened.

What voters need

Early voting runs through Friday, October 30. Voters must show one of seven acceptable forms of photo identification, or sign a Reasonable Impediment Declaration if they cannot reasonably obtain one. Polling places and hours are posted by each county’s elections office.