SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Voters in San Antonio and the rest of Bexar County may wait longer than usual for numbers on election night. Elections Administrator Michele Carew said the county will hold back early voting and mail ballot totals on Nov. 3 until every person standing in line when polls close has voted.
Polls shut at 7 p.m., but anyone already in line at that hour still gets to vote. Many Texas counties post early and mail results right at closing and then add Election Day ballots through the night. Carew said she breaks from that practice so people in line do not decide their votes no longer matter and walk away.
She said state election law leaves the call to her. If only a few hundred people are still waiting, results could come out close to 7 p.m., but with several thousand in line the release would likely slip at least an hour. She said she never wants it to run past 10 p.m. During the March primary, roughly 5,000 voters were still waiting at closing time on the last day.
Bexar County has about 1.3 million registered voters, out of roughly 19 million statewide. Turnout has run high, and long lines kept one site open until 9 p.m. when early voting began. Since then the county has brought in 40 more voting machines and check-in stations to speed things up, and it will offer more than 300 polling places on Election Day. Early voters can pick from more than 50 locations, and a new county website shows wait times so people can find the shortest line. The county also had to fix ballots on day one of early voting after school districts sent in the wrong local measures, a problem that has since been corrected.
Section: More San Antonio TX politics news
Filed under: San Antonio TX Politics News
