Early voting ends in Texas; Dallas County sees more than 620,000 voters in two weeks

DALLAS – Nicole McFarland has been voting since former President Bill Clinton’s administration. Friday was her first time as an early voter.

“I have surgery on Monday, so I have to vote early or I won’t be able to do it at all,” McFarland said.

She was one of more than 23,000 voters at the Frentz Park Branch Library who cast their ballots before the polls closed Friday at noon. 21.00.

“Everybody knows we had a rough start,” said Heider Garcia, Dallas County Administrator. “We had some problems to deal with. But then the turnout has also kept us busy because people have turned up to vote.”

Garcia said the department had to overcome an E-Pollbook software problem on the first day of early voting that caused screens to go black, display error messages and print the wrong ballot for some voters.

More than 620,000 votes had been cast on Friday, three hours before polling stations closed. Garcia said the ballots were coming in two weeks with an expansion of seven precincts. In 2020, the November presidential election spanned three weeks and produced around 720,000 votes.

“So in two weeks we’re doing almost what we did four years ago in three weeks. And that’s a testament, I think, to how people have been out there voting,” Garcia said.

Passion boiled over in some areas, but Garcia said nothing warranted an arrest or medical attention. He said the opposing sides facing each other should be de-escalated.

Selectman Kyle Knowles said the voting process was as secure as it was in 2020.

“It was pretty smooth,” Knowles said. “Like the last one I did.”

Garcia said Friday night that staff will dismantle the polling centers and take equipment to a secure area monitored by a live-stream camera until they remove the memory drives from each vote-counting machine on Tuesday.

Polling stations open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m