Final Preparations This Weekend For Early Voting In Texas
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FORT WORTH (CBS11) - Election workers will put in long hours over the weekend preparing the first day of early voting on Monday.
They're expecting an historic number of people to crowd the polls to vote.
"On the last day to register to vote we had over 2,500 people come to our counter in person to drop off your voter registration," said Tarrant County Assistant Election Administrator Stephen Vickers who works at the county's election headquarters. "That's not including people who mailed theirs in. That's just people who physically parked in the parking lot and walked through those doors."
So many people registered, workers were still processing 10,000 to 15,000 voter registrations into the system before Monday. And that's just Tarrant County.
"One of the reasons we are encouraging early voting is if you wait until election day and you go to your assigned polling site then you can probably expect to wait," said Tarrant County Election Administrator Frank Phillips.
New voters need to know you can't mail in ballots in Texas to avoid crowds unless you're over 65, disabled or will be out of the county during the elections. So, most people will have to go to a polling place.
In a warehouse they're packing up materials and readying 49 polling stations for early voting in Tarrant County. You can vote early at any polling place in your county -- not just the poll closest to you.
For those who want to avoid big crowds at the polls, Phillips said, "Early voting has a pretty typical pattern. The first day or two of early voting is going to be extremely busy and then it kind of drops off for a few days and then it gradually picks up to the last day of early voting. So if you can find an available area in that early span of voting that would be my recommendation."
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