Early voting stays heavy despite limited poll hours
Critics say closing at 4:30 p.m. hinders many from going after work
Harris County voters continued to smash early voting turnout records Tuesday, despite polling hours that prevent many residents from voting after they leave work.
More than 64,700 voters went to the polls to cast ballots, while at least another 1,500 returned mailin ballots, voting at a rate on par with presidential-year elections. Through two days of early voting, more than 243,600 Harris County voters have cast ballots in person or by mail, a record for a midterm election at this point.
For the first five days for early voting, Harris County’s 46 polling locations open at 8 a.m. and close at 4:30 p.m., the earliest time among the 15 Texas counties with the most registered voters.
Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, as the county’s chief election official, sets the early voting schedule and number of locations with approval from Harris County Commissioners Court. The county has closed its early voting locations at 4:30 p.m. for years, well before Stanart’s tenure.
Nonetheless, some have worried the hours hinder the county’s ability to meet voter demand, and possibly discourages people from casting ballots.
Harris County’s polling sched-
ule coincides with the regular business hours of Stanart’s office, which Stanart said was standard procedure. He said he would need to receive a waiver from the Texas Secretary of State’s office to extend the hours further, because the state Election Code says early voting “shall be conducted” during the hours in which the clerk’s “main business office is regularly open for business.”
However, Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, said those hours represent only a minimum requirement. Three Texas-based attorneys with expertise in elections also said they were unaware of a waiver requirement.
“I’ve never heard of a waiver,” said Buck Wood, an Austin-based election-law attorney. “I’ve never had anybody complain to me about it, and I’ve been doing this for almost 50 years.”
The section Stanart referenced applies only to counties in which the county clerk acts as the “early voting clerk.” In some cases, that duty falls to an appointed elections administrator, who follows a different set of guidelines for setting early voting hours.
Several other large Texas counties, including Travis, assign election duties to the county clerk and had early voting hours that extend beyond the clerk’s regular business hours, with some going from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
For his part, Stanart said he would have kept polls open later — like he did in 2016 — had he known turnout would reach such high levels. Midterm elections typically yield much lower turnout than those held in presidential years; the last time more than half of registered voters cast a ballot in a Texas midterm election was 1994.
“Nobody out there was ever predicting that we’d have this big” turnout, Stanart said.
Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter did not buy Stanart’s argument that he was abiding by the election code, saying it was the first time she had heard that explanation. She said the early poll closures were “absolutely a very intentional effort to keep people from voting.”
Stanart, a Republican, faces a re-election challenge this year from Democrat Diane Trautman, a Harris County Department of Education trustee.
The county clerk did not respond to a request for comment on Schecter’s assertion.
Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson was not immediately available for comment.
In future elections, Stanart said he would look to expand early voting hours to account for this year’s heightened turnout.
“It’s very probable we have a new normal here,” he said. “We do our planning and everything off historical numbers.”
Harris County residents have not taken issue with the early poll closures during recent cycles, said Joe Stinebaker, County Judge Ed Emmett’s spokesman.
“There’s never been a time I’m aware of that anybody has ever come to the judge or complained they be extended or changed in any way,” Stinebaker said. Emmett took office in March 2007.
Though Stanart theoretically could change the early voting hours, he would have to post a public notice for 72 continuous hours before making the change, said Austin-based attorney Eric Opiela. Voting already goes until 7 p.m. Saturday, the first day that could take effect.
“There’s not much that can be done at this point,” Opiela said. “I think we need to look at that next (legislative) session, why you’d want to have the 72-hour notice.”
Beyond the first week, the code sets stricter requirements for early voting hours among counties with populations of 100,000 or more. Those counties must conduct early voting for at least 12 hours on the last Saturday of early voting, at least five hours on the last Sunday of early voting and at least 12 hours every weekday during the last week of early voting.
Harris County polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 29 through Nov. 2.
Texas as a whole has seen massive early voting turnout: On Monday, more than 570,000 people in the 15 counties with the most registered voters cast ballots in person or through the mail — more than the three previous midterm years combined.
Eight of those counties — including Dallas, Travis, Collin and El Paso — posted first-day early voting turnouts that surpassed that of 2016.
Harris County’s two-day total of 181,916 approached the total of all 12 days of early voting in 2006, when 191,533 people cast ballots.
Fort Bend County surged past its 2016 presidential election record for early voting on Monday, with roughly 18,362 people heading to the polls.
“It’s just really surprising to us,” said John Oldham, the county’s elections administrator. “It’s just kind of unheard of to have a gubernatorial year to exceed the turnout in the presidential year. We’ll see if it holds up.”
During the 2016 election, roughly 18,180 people in Fort Bend County cast ballots on the first day of early voting. In the 2014 midterm election, only 4,837 people showed up to vote on the first day.
Lines continued to stretch on Tuesday as residents braved the rainy and cold weather across the county. At Sugar Land Branch library, a line to vote expanded past several bookshelves as other people crowded in to check out books or study. At Four Corners Community Center, a line also went to the door.
At Missouri City Community Center, the parking lot was packed and a line reached the door during lunch hour on the first day of early voting. The cars had thinned out on Tuesday, but senior early voting clerk James Scott said he still had seen a steady stream of over 500 voters.
Scott, who has served at the polling place for a decade, said he has noticed more millennial voters than usual heading to the community center to cast ballots.
“People are concerned about different things and it’s affecting them in different ways,” said Scott. “Hopefully, this is a trend that it will be heavy for the whole time. This doesn’t mean that next year they will turn out. It doesn’t mean if we have a run-off in the election there will be a lot of people. It could. I hope it does.”
By Tuesday, the number continued to grow in the county with a total of over 29,000 people voting since Monday, according to Oldham.
“We really thought we would have 10 or 11,000 yesterday,” said Oldham. “That number is really kind of overwhelming for everybody.”