DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF News) — Today is the final day North Texans can fill out their ballots early ahead of Saturday’s May elections.
As of Monday, around 31,000 people had voted early in Tarrant County. Collin County had more than 25,000 early ballots cast, leading elections officials to believe early voting is still a popular thing — even in slower election cycles.
“If you look at November’s election, it was 83 percent of the total votes cast,” said Collin County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet. “Typically for the May election, since they’re Saturday elections, you’ll find early voting percentage wise being about half of the vote, with the other half coming on election day.”
Local elections typically yield a lower turnout as well, especially considering the attention paid to November’s presidential election.
“That doesn’t mean there’s not interest,” Sherbet said. “It just means turnout in these kinds of elections don’t match the turnouts you see in a presidential or gubernatorial type of election.”
But Tarrant County Elections Administrator Stephen Vickers says the lower turnout for local elections as opposed to national ones is misguided. Many cities in the Metroplex have mayoral elections on this weekend’s ballot, including Fort Worth, Arlington, Plano, Allen, Frisco and McKinney.
To Vickers, that and other local races are what North Texans need to be focused on.
“These are your local city councilmen, your local school board,” Vickers said. “These are the guys who are actually going to affect you the most. In my eyes, these are the most elections you have throughout the year.”
