North Texas elections administrators ready for start of early voting
DALLAS - Big numbers are expected at the polls with the start of early voting across Texas on Tuesday.
Elections administrators in North Texas’ major counties say they are ready for people to vote in person during a pandemic in what could be record turnout.
A walk through the Richardson City Hall & Civic Center showed a polling site ready for lines of voters. Markets will have peopled spaced seven and a half feet apart. A line is expected to extend inside and out.
Dallas County officials also put the finishing touches over the weekend at the American Airlines Center, perhaps the most notable polling site of this year’s election. The AAC site includes plexiglass dividers and socially distanced voting machines.
The spacing and safety precautions at those venues are similar to preparations going on across the state.
Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole expects the greatest turnout she’s seen in her 33 years on the job. She’s encouraging the public to space out the vote and come on off days.
“We have three weeks,” she said. “Usually in the middle of the week, when you’re talking about Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, in those first few weeks, or even Sunday.”
Meanwhile, at least 10,000 voters who have requested mail-in ballots in Dallas County are still waiting to receive them.
“We have over 90,000 that we’ve mailed out, and I believe we have over 25,000 or 30,000 that have been returned so far,” Pippins-Poole said.
Heider Garcia, Tarrant County Elections Administrator, says he believes his locations are good to go.
“100 percent. We've obviously been working on this for months now. The machines are ready, the sites are set up, the staff has been trained,” Garcia said.
He said $2 million in CARES Act grant money helped purchase sanitizing products and hundreds of additional voting machines to keep lines moving and limit person-to-person exposure.
Garcia said voters can also do their part to keep lines moving by taking into account that straight party voting is no longer an option. In addition, some elections that were postponed from May will be on the November ballot. To sum it up, expect a long list of races.
“You can get your sample ballot. Strongly encouraging everyone get your sample ballot. Look at it at home. Print it. Mark what you want. You can bring that paper with you and that can be the difference between taking two minutes at the polls or taking eight or 10,” Garcia said.
As for poll watchers and those who may be there to cause disruption, Garcia said the ground rules are clear about who can be removed from a site.
“Watchers have to be duly accredited. You can't just walk into a polling place and say I'm a watcher and sit here and watch,” Garcia said. “As soon as you're done, you must leave the polling place.”
Tarrant County will offer an additional convenience to help people use their time wisely.
“On the website you're also going to find a map that will tell you wait times. Our coworkers are going to be printing little tickets and measuring how long the line is and that's going to be available on the website so you can choose where to go,” Garcia said.
Similar technology is available for Dallas County and some other parts of the state.
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