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

DALLAS — Nicole McFarland has been voting since the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Friday was her first time as an early voter.

“I’m having 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 9 p.m.

“Everyone knows we’ve had a rough start,” said Dallas County Administrator Heider Garcia. “We had some issues. But turnout also kept us busy because people showed up to vote.”

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

On Friday, three hours before the polls closed, more than 620,000 votes had been cast. Garcia said the ballots arrived within two weeks, expanding to seven precincts. In 2020, the November presidential election lasted three weeks and yielded approximately 720,000 votes.

“So in two weeks we’re doing almost what we did four years ago, in three weeks. And that, I think, is a testament to how people voted,” Garcia said.

Passion boiled over in some areas, but Garcia said no arrest or medical attention was needed. He said opposing sides needed to be de-escalated.

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

“It went pretty smoothly,” Knowles said. “Just like the last one I did.”

Garcia said Friday evening that staff will take down the polling stations and move the equipment to a secure area monitored by a livestream camera until they remove the memory drives from each machine for vote counting on Tuesday.

The polling stations open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m