Officials: Tarrant County elections website wait time data getting more accurate
FORT WORTH, Texas - The Tarrant County Elections website is getting better at estimating wait times as turnout continues to be strong at polling sites across the area.
Tarrant County Elections Chief Heider Garcia says the website, with a few days under its belt, is more accurate with predicting wait times. Thursday was the third day of early voting for the November general election.
“The electronic poll booth prints a ticket that you give to the last person in line and when they get to the front it’s scanned and updates, OK people are taking 30 minutes, 40 minutes to get up here,” Garcia said.
Poll workers report the data every half hour. The online result shows color coded locations, with green indicating the shortest waits and red locations indicating an hour or longer.
Around lunchtime at the Griffin Sub-Courthouse on Miller Street in Fort Worth it was roughly 30 minutes.
“It was very nice, it didn’t take long and we were able to get out of there very quickly,” said voter Virnelda Lewis.
About the same time, the Southside Community Center on East Rosedale had practically no wait.
Another major time saver can be sample ballots. There’s a big push urging voters to look at theirs before arriving at the voting booth.
“Use the sample ballot and come in with your mind made up already if you can on who you vote on. It’s a long ballot. Some people have 40-45 races in propositions to vote on, so if you do that ahead of time it’ll be a shorter time,” Garcia said.
Early voting continues until Oct. 30.
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