Travis County broke its presidential primary early voting record with more than 115,700 votes cast by Friday, County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said.
Early voting for the primary in presidential, state and local races began Feb. 18. Travis County’s registered voters had until 7 p.m. Friday to cast their ballots at one of 34 early voting locations.
On Friday alone, 23,803 voters showed up to the polls by 5 p.m., DeBeauvoir said. As early as midday Friday, the last day of early voting, the number of Travis County voters had surpassed the county’s 2016 early voting primary election record of 92,000.
Since Feb. 18, more than 115,700 in-person ballots had been cast by 5 p.m., with two hours still to go for early voting.
At the University of Texas, 2,004 people voted in-person as of 5 p.m. Friday, for a total of 8,528 early voters.
“It is a wonderful turnout,” DeBeauvoir said. “Of course, we expect more people to vote because we are a fast-growing county. However, I think our analysis is going to show this turnout is above and beyond just normal growth.”
Travis County currently has 822,000 registered voters, according to election officials.
“By the time we finish tonight, I think we’re looking at a 14% turnout in early voting, which is approximately 115,000 earlier voters,” DeBeauvoir said. “Everybody is all excited about voting.”
DeBeauvoir said she anticipated having long lines at voting locations Friday, but if people showed up late on the final day of early voting it would not delay election results like it would on the primary’s election day on Tuesday.
Over in Williamson County, election officials said they received 10,436 in-person votes by 5 p.m. Friday, for a total of 46,308 early votes. Mail-in votes totaled 5,043.
“That is a really good turnout,” said Jenifer Favreau, deputy elections administrator for Williamson County. “One benefit of early voting is that we do see shorter lines, and you never know what factors, like weather, come into play when you limit yourself to election day.”
Jennifer Anderson, elections administrator for Hays County, said a total of 18,810 in-person early votes were collected by 5 p.m. Friday. And, at the Texas State University polling locations, 1,247 in-person votes were collected by midafternoon, Anderson said.
Bastrop County reported a total of 7,308 early votes as of 5 p.m. Friday, with 1,469 residents showing up in-person on the last day.
Kristen Miles, elections administrator for Bastrop County, said the early voting numbers were about what local officials expected. However, since the 2016 primary elections, the county has grown by about 10,000 voters.
“The total number of in-person early voters has elevated slightly since 2016,” Miles said.
Hays, Bastrop and Williamson counties all reported an average wait time of about 10 minutes, according to election officials Friday.
Back in Travis County, wait times averaged at or about 24 minutes by 5 p.m. Friday, election officials said.
DeBeauvoir said Travis County takes an average of 47 seconds to get voters set up with the ballots. The election equipment, called Express Vote, worked smoothly at every location, she said.
“It is a ’best of both worlds’ voting system that offers us electronic voting (and) a paper trail that the voter verifies for themselves before they put it in the ballot box,” DeBeauvoir said.
“We use the electronic copy for fast and accurate results on election night,” she said. “We use the hard copy paper to do a variety of different kinds of audits post-election. It’s also available in case we need it for a recount.”
For Travis County voters, DeBeauvoir said votetravis.com is the best resource for finding polling locations, wait times for those locations, what to bring to vote and information about candidates. DeBeauvoir said grocery store locations, such as Randalls or Fiesta Mart, would likely have longer lines.
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