COVID may mean longer lines at the polls in July. Officials recommend voting early
Inna Dietrich has served as a poll worker at Southlake Town Hall for the past two elections, and would love to do it again. But with the novel coronavirus still spreading and a daughter who has Type 1 diabetes, interacting with hundreds of voters during the upcoming July runoff elections will be too much of a risk.
“Even if I get it and it’s mild, it puts my daughter at greater risk,” Dietrich said. “Unfortunately, due to the dangers with COVID, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it.”
Fewer polling places and the need for election workers to take extra precautions, like disinfecting machines, may cause voters to run into lines and spend more time trying to cast their ballot in-person.
The novel coronavirus’ outbreak has already spurred legal battles over expanding access to mail-in ballots, postponed the primary runoff elections — originally scheduled for May 26 — to July 14 and led to an extension of the early voting period by a week.
Election Day is a little over a month away, and Tarrant County’s Republican and Democratic parties are working to ensure polling places will be staffed and finalizing how both voters and poll workers’ health and safety will be prioritized.
In Tarrant County, Republican voters will vote on a precinct chair and decide between Elizabeth Beach and Brian Walker to serve as a judge on the Second Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, Democrats will decide several races, including whether former Air Force pilot MJ Hegar or state Sen. Royce West will face U.S. Sen John Cornyn in the November general election.
“Given the fact that on the Republican side, we only have one major thing on the ballot, we were willing to give up a number of locations, but the Democrats have multiple items on the ballot,” Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Rick Barnes said. “And so we recognize the need for them to keep many of their locations open.”
While the goal was to have all 192 polling places available that were open for the presidential primary election in March, Heider Garcia, Tarrant County’s Elections Administrator, said last week that the number of polling places for Election Day on July 14 dropped down to 182. As of Wednesday, the list of polling places for Election Day had not yet been posted.
And if a sufficient number of election workers can’t be secured, then more locations may become unavailable.
On May 18, the Tarrant County Democratic Party sent an email urging residents to serve as election workers across Tarrant County. At the time, about 150 presiding judges had agreed, leaving 42 polling places not covered, according to the email. A minimum of 920 judges and clerks are needed in total.
“If we don’t find a presiding election judge at these locations, we run the risk of having polling locations closed or long lines at remaining polling locations,” the email read.
Since then, party officials have said they’re closer to meeting the minimum number of workers needed and pointed to the fact that they’ve dealt with staffing setbacks before. Officials did not provide numbers on how many poll workers they have.
“There’s always going to be somebody that doesn’t show up to pick up their equipment, or at the last minute they back out, so this is not just a COVID issue,” Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairwoman Deborah Peoples said.
And with the countywide voting system adopted last year, Peoples stressed voters can cast their ballot at any polling place across Tarrant County.
Protecting against the virus
Zoe Courtney has served as an election judge in Southlake for close to two decades, but she’s still undecided if she’ll serve again in July. At 67, she’s at a higher risk of developing complications if she contracts COVID-19.
“My husband’s a little bit older, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to be in that environment for 14 or 15 hours,” Courtney said.
She’s already requested a mail-in ballot, and wants to hear more about what precautions are being taken at the polls. On Super Tuesday, the pandemic was in its early stages, and a day later, the first COVID-19 case outside of repatriated Americans was identified in Texas.
Ahead of the March election, Courtney and Dietrich said they hadn’t received any training on social distancing guidelines or how often to be cleaning machines. Dietrich said they had brought their own gloves and hand sanitizer, and each time someone used a machine she would wipe down the screen.
“Most of the day, our lines wrapped around outside of the room, around the banister, all the way down the stairs — that’s people right next to each other,” Dietrich said. With, “social distancing, we’re out the door and down the block.”
Long lines on Super Tuesday were due, in part, to a higher than anticipated turnout and machines being divided between the parties on Election Day — with Republicans being allocated 752 more machines than Democrats.
County election officials had advised the parties to share machines back in March, but they still plan to separate them — with Democrats receiving a greater number due to more races on the ballot.
“In March, we thought we had adjusted for what we thought was going to be the increased turnout. We did not. We didn’t do a good job of forecasting,” Peoples said. “So we’ve adjusted for that.”
Last month, the Secretary of State’s Office released an eight-page checklist of “minimum recommended health protocols” for voters and election officials, and recommended that voters consider wearing a face mask and bring their own hand sanitizer and pen or stylus to the polls.
It’s a call elections officials echoed, urging voters to wear masks in order to both protect fellow voters and poll workers.
“A mask is not a political statement or a fashion statement. It’s a public health statement. It says, ‘I care about you, and I don’t want you to be exposed to anything,’” Peoples said.
Tarrant County has been approved for federal funds to help cover staffing, supplies and more costs for the 2020 election cycle. Garcia said a limited number of masks will be available at each polling place, as well as hand sanitizer and gloves. The Tarrant County Democratic Party also said that wipes would be provided to sanitize equipment, and that tape will be used to mark distances of six feet. Additional protocols are still being finalized.
The Secretary of State’s guidelines also recommended that voters who have recently been in contact with a confirmed case, or are exhibiting any COVID-19 symptoms, utilize curbside voting. But election officials stressed it’s a cumbersome process that won’t be quick, and Dietrich said poll workers will already have their hands full with additional tasks, like disinfecting equipment.
“You have to physically take the voting machine out to the car,” Courtney said of curbside voting. “It just kind of stops everything.”
With fewer polling places on Election Day and social distancing guidelines and precautions in place, election officials are urging voters to take advantage of early voting at one of 45 vote centers across Tarrant County to avoid long lines and potentially crowded polling places.
“The reality is we’ve never ever gone through what we’ve gone through with this pandemic,” Barnes said. “Nobody alive has ever experienced the situation. And so, there’s been a big learning curve for everybody.”
Early voting runs from June 29 through July 10. Thursday, July 2 is the deadline for the Tarrant County Elections Department to receive vote-by-mail applications.
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
