Trinna Stidom of Fort Worth has a plan to vote Saturday.
“I plan to have a couple bottles of water, some chips or crackers,” she said. “I’m [going to] be in comfortable clothes, comfortable shoes. And [just] take step one, step two, step one, step two, until I get to the poll.”
All the preparation is in case she’s stuck in a long line.
Stidom will join about 6 million Texans who have already voted early. Early and mail voters so far have reached more than 65% of the total turnout four years ago, a record pace.
Bruce Sherbet is elections administrator in nearby Collin County. He said despite high turnout, he hasn't seen any problems.
“In this county, for the last four or five days, we haven’t had waits really over 20 minutes anywhere. And we’re voting record numbers.”
Collin County has seen over 40% of its registered voters cast ballots already. But those kinds of numbers are not unusual there. Sherbet said 83% of Collin County voters turned out early in 2016 and 81% in 2018.
“We have a history in this county of people really embracing and choosing to do early voting versus [waiting until] Election Day,” he said.
So what does this mean for the outcome?
“The first few days of early voting, we saw a huge surge in … Democrat primary voters that were voting early or by mail,” said Derek Ryan, a Republican political consultant. “And since those first few days, we’ve seen Republican primary voters start showing up.”
Ryan is working on federal and state races this election. He looks at who’s already turned out, and then checks their history of voting in recent party primaries. But at this point, we only know whether or not these voters participated in recent primaries; we don’t know who specifically they voted for.
“You’re going to have some people that consider themselves Democrats who vote in the Republican primary for any number of reasons, and vice versa,” Ryan said.
And according to Ryan’s analysis, more than a third of early voters so far have no history of voting in recent state or federal primaries. Voters aged 50 and over make up the majority of the votes cast, and those under 30 are about 11% of the votes to-date.
With so many variables this year — a pandemic, recession, multiple court cases over voting procedures, and a slew of competitive races — voters like Trinna Stidom are taking nothing for granted.
“I’m not giving up, I’m not leaving. I plan to be there as early as a Saturday morning will allow me,” she said.
If you can’t go on Saturday to early vote, you can do so until October 30. And then Election Day, of course, is November 3.
Find more info at www.votetexas.gov.
Got a tip? Email Bret Jaspers at bjaspers@kera.org. You can follow Bret on Twitter @bretjaspers.
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