Texas Early Vote Tops 3.6 Million in First Week; Harris County Passes 500,000

More than 3.6 million Texans cast ballots in the first five days of early voting for the November 3 general election, according to Texas Secretary of State data compiled by Transparency USA and reported Saturday by the Texas Gazette. Through Friday, 3,673,801 votes had been cast - about 19.4 percent of the state's 18,966,727 registered voters - including 3,514,704 in-person ballots and 159,097 mail ballots, with 239 of the state's 254 counties reporting. Monday's opening day was the busiest, with 784,148 in-person voters statewide.

Harris County passed half a million ballots in the first week - about 1 in 5 registered voters - and no midterm in county records going back to 1998 has started faster, ABC13 reported Saturday. More than 104,000 people voted in person on Monday alone, a first-day midterm record, and each day after that beat the same day in both 2018 and 2022. The county has about 400,000 more registered voters than it did in 2018, but turnout is ahead of every midterm on record even as a share of registered voters. The busiest site this year is the Richard and Meg Weekley Community Center in Cypress, the station reported.

The rest of the Houston region is running hot as well. Fort Bend County recorded 138,972 votes through Friday - about 24.1 percent of its registered voters, a higher share than Harris - while Brazoria County stood at 59,242 votes (22.8 percent), Galveston County at 57,319 (22.9 percent) and Montgomery County at 78,402 (about 16.3 percent), according to the state data. Older Texans are carrying the early vote: voters 65 and older have turned out at a 32.2 percent rate so far, compared with about 9 percent among voters under 35.

Early voting continues through Friday, October 30. In Harris County, vote centers are open Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 7 p.m., and any registered county voter can use any of the county's 75 early voting centers, according to the county clerk's schedule. At the top of the Harris County ballot, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton faces Democrat James Talarico and Libertarian Ted Brown for the U.S. Senate, and county voters are choosing a new county judge, with Democrat Letitia Plummer and Republican Orlando Sanchez running to replace Lina Hidalgo, who is not seeking reelection.