Still want to vote early? These Fort Worth area polling sites should have short waits
Friday is the last day of early voting, and Tarrant County residents who waited until the last day to cast their ballots should find good weather and relatively short lines at polling sites.
Polls will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday — and the weather should be seasonally comfortable, with sunny skies and a high in the mid-60s, according to the National Weather Service.
After polls close Friday, anyone who wants to vote will have to wait until election day Tuesday, Nov. 3.
By the time early voting ends Friday, it’s likely that more Tarrant County residents will have voted during the early voting period than in the entire elections of 2016 and 2018 — including in-person votes on election day, early voting, and absentee ballots received by mail.
“I think it’s fantastic,” said Heider Garcia, Tarrant County election administrator. “Early voting is there to give a chance to people who have a scheduling issue. I love the fact that 50% voted before election day.”
As of Thursday afternoon, 670,006 people had voted early in Tarrant County — which amounts to 56% of the county’s 1,196,407 registered voters.
In 2018, a total of 632,587 people — 55.7% of registered voters at the time — cast ballots in the November election. It wasn’t a presidential election year, but it featured a high-profile battle for a Senate seat between incumbent Ted Cruz and his Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke.
In 2016, a record 682,740 people voted in Tarrant County — which amounted to 62.8% of registered voters at the time.
This year, if early voting continues on its current pace through 7 p.m. Friday, the 2016 record number of voters likely will be broken — four days before the actual election day.
Tarrant County officials approved eight extra early voting sites — bringing the total to 58 early voting centers — to handle large crowds in the final days of early voting. The county’s elections website posts live information on wait times at the voting centers.
On Thursday, 54 of the 58 early voting centers reported little to no wait time. Of the remaining four early voting sites, two reported wait times of 30 to 45 minutes, and two reported wait times of more than an hour.
Garcia also said that he was optimistic that a computer glitch discovered earlier this week as mail-in ballots were being processed won’t affect as many ballots as previously expected.
The glitch involved the printed ballots, which are sent to Tarrant County residents who will be out of the county during the voting period. Earlier this week, Garcia disclosed to county commissioners that roughly 20,000 mail-in ballots might have to be duplicated manually by elections staff because the computer machinery wasn’t recognizing the mail-in ballots’ bar codes.
But on Thursday, Garcia said he was optimistic that the number of ballots that would have to be manually duplicated would be fewer than previously expected — closer to 12,000 ballots. That will still create a time-consuming work load for election workers, he said, but it should be a task that is manageable to get most election results counted on election night or the next day.
