Countywide vote centers way to go in Fort Bend?

For Sugar Land resident and lawyer Farha Ahmed, voting at Sugar Land City Hall on Election Day was a breeze. She walked from work to the nearest polling place, didn’t have to wait in line and was done voting in 10 minutes. If anything, the experience was uneventful, Ahmed said.

Which is just how it should be, Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham said.

This year, in an effort to bolster voter turnout, Fort Bend debuted countywide vote centers.

Previously, registered voters could cast ballots from any polling place during early voting but had to vote in their precincts on Election Day. This Nov. 3, voters could cast ballots from any of the county’s 78 vote centers.

Turnout for an election without a gubernatorial or presidential candidate reached record highs in the county this year. Oldham declared the vote centers a success

and is taking steps to make them permanent in Fort Bend elections.

Habits of voters change, says county

Voter turnout in the county was 13.3 percent, up from 8.7 percent from 2013, the most recent constitutional amendment election.

Nearly 60 percent of the 49,947 who voted in this election did so on Election Day.

It’s difficult to know if the increased turnout was due to the vote centers or interest in ballot items such as the statewide homestead exemption, Oldham said.

Many sites had 10 times more voters than in 2013, and many voted at polls away from their precincts. For example, 998 voted at Pecan Grove Baptist Church. Less than a third lived in the church’s precinct. Only 98 voted in the church in 2013.

“When you look at these numbers and you see people from all over the county voting in a location, obviously they’re voting where it’s convenient,” Oldham said.

That was the case for Ahmed. She voted close to where she worked, not in her precinct. Knowing she didn’t have to drive to her precinct polls before they closed at 7 p.m. made Ahmed, who typically participates in early voting, slightly less nervous about waiting until Election Day.

The centers that tended to see the most traffic had previously been early voting and Election Day sites. These include First Colony Conference Center, where 743 people voted this year compared to 111 in 2013, and the Rosenberg Annex, where Oldham waited in a line of about 10 people to vote in the late afternoon.

The annex tallied 462 votes this year, compared to 74 in 2013, with voters from 49 precincts represented.

Before primaries for president start

Fort Bend’s vote centers will be in use next month for Houston’s runoff. There will only be one location for early voting, which starts Dec. 2.

On Election Day, Dec. 12, voters registered within the city of Houston can go to any of seven Fort Bend Election Day sites. They will all be on the county’s east side.

Looking ahead at the presidential primaries on March 1, Oldham already has ideas of the challenges that will arise when the county’s Democrat and Republican parties and presidential campaigns push voters to the polls.

About a dozen of the county’s 78 vote centers garnered most of Election Day voters, resulting in lines at locations including the Cinco Ranch Library and Pecan Grove Baptist Church.

Lines were probably worst at the church, Oldham said, guessing that voters waited 30 to 40 minutes to vote at the end of the day. Oldham expects much higher turnout at the primaries and in the November presidential election; so these lines could triple in length if nothing changes.

His goal is to figure out how to convince voters to head to another center a few miles away. The centers that didn’t get as many voters tended to be close to popular centers like First Colony Conference Center, Oldham said.

Oldham knows he will add at least one more site for the presidential primaries — Stafford City Hall — and likely another site in Grand Mission. He makes recommendations for vote center locations to Fort Bend County Commissioners Court, which votes whether to accept his recommendations.

Democratic Party chair Donald Bankston wants more centers and soon. Ideally, he’d like to see more in retail spaces like grocery stores where people go every day.

Though he voted early, Bankston worked on Election night from about 6:30 until 11 p.m., bringing in and checking in voting machines.

Bankston is an advocate of vote centers but questions how much of a difference they will make given the popularity of mail-in and early voting. His party plans to have a major push to increase voting by mail in the presidential elections. He also sees Texas’ voter ID laws as a bigger barrier to voting than having to drive back to a precinct on Election Day.

Before the presidential elections, Bankston said, the county should add more vote centers in areas where he perceives gaps: Ridgemont and Rosenberg.

After the runoff, the county will conduct a public hearing to get feedback and will analyze results from an Election Day voter survey before applying to the Texas secretary of state to make vote centers permanent.

But anecdotal responses are encouraging, Oldham said.

Fort Bend voters said they liked the new system, and their satisfaction is another sign of success, Oldham said.