Early voting turnout in Travis County could exceed 50% of registered voters

TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas – On the last day of early voting, eight polling locations in Travis County will be open until 10 p.m. According to the Travis County Registrar of Voters, more than 50% of voters may have cast their ballots before early voting ended.

By the end of the day Thursday, more than 431,000 Travis County voters had cast their ballots, with hundreds of thousands more expected Tuesday.

At lunchtime Friday, the wait at the Ben-Hur Shriner Temple on West Anderson Lane was just a few minutes.

“Oh, it was easy. Yes. The line moved quickly,” said Rip Sutton, who planned to vote Thursday but came Friday instead. “This is a big presidential election year. “A lot of people have opinions,” I said to Sutton. “I've never seen anything like this before. “The turnout is huge,” he replied.

That's what got first-time voter Scout Goldsmith elected. She is 18 years old. “I've been waiting to vote since I was 10 years old and saw Hillary Clinton lose, and since then my life has basically been overshadowed by politics,” she said.

In fact, 41 million members of Generation Z – currently defined as people between the ages of 16 and 27 – are eligible to vote across the country. A poll found that 82 percent were motivated to vote in this election, making Goldsmith's voice a potentially very powerful group.

“Do you see great enthusiasm in people your age?” I asked her. “I do, but I don’t know how much of it just affects my social circle. I'm spending time with a lot of other people who kind of have the same views as me and we're all looking forward to voting,” she said.

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In Travis County, they are expected to be among more than 50% of Travis County voters who voted before early voting ends at 10 p.m. This is according to Travis County Registrar of Voters Bruce Elfant, who posted a graphic on social media Friday morning showing voter turnout since 2008, the highest in 2016 and 2020.

“Today was the last day. So I wanted to take advantage of that and it's important to me to vote for our future, for the future of my children,” said Oltea Heresu on the way from the parking lot.

City Council candidate Mike Siegel was among the few candidates who greeted people at the Ben Hur site. He says early voters will have made their decision when they get here. “The people who come in are anxious to do their business. They already know who they are voting for and why and they don’t really want to talk to us,” he said.

There will be eight polling locations in Travis County open until 10 p.m. Go to votetravis.gov to find one near you.