North Texas leaders fully prepared for Election Day as more record numbers expected

Ahead of Election Day, more Texans have already voted this year than in 2016. The turnout is expected to continue to shatter records on Election Day.

DALLAS - Ahead of Election Day, more Texans have already voted this year than in 2016. The turnout is expected to continue to shatter records on Election Day.

Local elections officials say they've been up to the challenge and will remain that way on Tuesday.

In a year when so many things have gone wrong, elections officials in DFW are reassuring voters that so far ballots are being cast in record number without major issue.

Collin County leads Texas with the highest percentage of registered voters turning out to vote. Nearly half a million people are expected to vote there by the time polls close Election Day.

“We think early voting has voted about 85% of the vote. So we’re looking at maybe around 70,000 voters turning up to vote on Election Day. We have 102 locations for that to happen,” said Collin County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet. “We’ve increased them by 40% to make sure that we could space everyone out to accommodate turnout on Election Day.”

Speaking on behalf of the elections department, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins hopes to hit one million after Tuesday.

“We’ve had over 800,000 people vote so far,” he said. “Not a single COVID-transmission case from voting.”

Tarrant and Denton counties did have poll workers test positive, causing polling places to shut down for cleaning, sending election officials searching for new people to fill their jobs.

Tarrant County also reported an issue with mail-in ballots that were improperly printed. On Monday, the elections administrator held an emergency meeting asking Republican and Democratic parties to provide more volunteers to monitor part of the mail-in ballot scanning process. It's required to ensure that the process is fair. Thousands of mail-in ballots are still outstanding.

Many states may continue counting votes for days

It might e days before we know the outcome of the election. SMU political science professor Cal Jillson talks to Good Day about the millions of mail ballots and different rules in every state.

In Texas, ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day and received by 5 p.m. Wednesday to be counted.

Jenkins urges anyone who has not mailed their ballot to instead drop it off in-person at their main elections office or bring their ballot to vote in-person instead.

“You should feel comfortable if you want to vote in-person to do that tomorrow,” he said.

Because there is such high early voter turnout and those ballots can begin being counted Tuesday, a large percentage of the results will be known when polls close at 7 p.m.

Both the Collin County elections administrator and the Dallas County judge say we could have results in DFW in the early morning hours Wednesday.