Election Day in Travis County: 500,886 Voters Still Hold a Ballot, and Polls Run 7 to 7 at Any Vote Center
Early voting banked 447,689 ballots - 47.2 percent of the county's rolls. Tuesday belongs to the other half, and any of them can vote at any polling site in the county.
More than half of Travis County's electorate goes into Election Day still holding its vote. Early voting produced 447,689 ballots - 47.20 percent of the county's 948,575 registered voters - which leaves 500,886 registered voters who had not cast a ballot when early voting closed, according to the Austin Bulletin's Nov. 2 calculation from the county's final early-voting totals, read in full this cycle.
The early electorate voted in person, overwhelmingly: 427,412 in-person ballots made up 95.5 percent of the early total, against 16,793 mail ballots (3.8 percent) and 3,484 limited ballots (0.8 percent). Mail ballots still arriving are not counted in those figures, and one early-voting door has closed for good: limited ballots - for voters who moved here from another Texas county - were available only during early voting at 5501 Airport Blvd., and the county elections office fields eligibility questions at 512-238-8683.
Tuesday's rules are the simple part. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, and Travis County runs countywide vote centers, so a registered voter can cast a ballot at any polling site in the county - the county's Election Day site list is posted, and its election page carries a wait-times section for checking lines before heading out. Voters can confirm their registration and see their personal ballot through the county's voter lookup.
Once the polls close, the county posts returns on its election results site, and its live turnout tracker for the Nov. 3 election is already running. With the Senate and governor's races both sitting inside a few points in the final polls, the 500,886 ballots still out there are more than enough to decide every close race on the Travis County ballot.
