Texas Early Voting Opens With a Record 19 Million on the Rolls — and a Trail of State Errors

Texas Early Voting Opens With a Record 19 Million on the Rolls — and a Trail of State Errors

In-person early voting runs October 19 through October 30

Texans can begin casting early in-person ballots on Monday, October 19, and the window closes Friday, October 30. Election Day is November 3. Applications to vote by mail must reach county early-voting clerks by October 23 — a received-by deadline, not a postmark. Completed mail ballots must arrive by 7 p.m. on November 3. More than 40,000 Texans had already voted by mail before in-person voting began.

Officials say a year-long backlog is now cleared

A software update to the Department of Public Safety's online driver's-license portal in October 2025 dropped three data fields, so at least 500,000 registration records and address updates never reached counties; a lawsuit puts the figure near 600,000. Harris County received about 75,000 late records and Dallas about 68,000. Denton processed 42,000 and Travis 35,000, with Travis still holding 20,000 routine applications. Howden's office offered counties grants for overtime and temporary workers and says no county has pending applications left.

A second glitch delayed 15,000 more records

Tarrant County keeps 92 fewer polling sites

Commissioners voted 3-2 to cut Election Day sites from 316 in 2022 to 224, and early-voting sites from 50 to 47. Fort Worth City Council member Deborah Peoples sued; on October 13 Judge Patrick Gallagher declined to reinstate the sites, with the county arguing voting machines could not be retested in time. The Dallas Morning News reported that one predominantly Black and Hispanic ZIP code in East Fort Worth lost all three of its polling places.

Citizenship screening also removed voters

Both marquee races sit inside the margin of error

Turnout is the number that matters next

Texas voted at 57 percent in 2024, against 64 percent nationally, and nearly one in four registered voters turned out for the March primary. Polling places must stay open at least nine hours on weekdays from October 19-23, at least 12 consecutive hours on Saturday, at least six on Sunday, and 12 hours each weekday in the final week. Voting-rights groups are asking a judge to order DPS and the Secretary of State to keep the registration pipeline working and to document compliance within a month. That lawsuit remains unresolved as ballots go out.