North Texas election officials see surge in mail-in ballot returns

Surging returns of mail-in ballots means voting will be off to a big start when early voting gets underway next week.

The coronavirus pandemic and the country’s political climate may be the driving factors behind the increase in mail-in ballots.

North Texas election administrators say that will probably equate to a huge turnout on Tuesday, the first day of early voting.

“Clearly, the number of absentee ballots being requested and being returned back are showing that there is a lot of interest,” said Tarrant County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia.

Tarrant County says the post office is getting ballots back.

“I’m literally helping run the mail myself,” Garcia said. “I see the postmark on the envelope, and they’re not more than two, three days old, most of them.”

Constitutional law attorney David Coale says there are two stages in the process for mail-in ballots: qualifying and counting.

“When your ballot goes in, there is a board appointed in every county in Texas that reviews the ballot to make sure it's legally correct,” he said. “Counting is relatively quick. You're probably just running them through a machine or using the standard process counting that takes place Election Day.

“We think that the first day is always going to be a heavy day on hot elections like this,” said Collin County Elections Administer Bruce Sherbet.

Early voting in-person is expected to mirror mail-in. Administrators advise printing a sample ballot and spending some time with it.

“Voters may not know that they have other things on their ballot like local elections, maybe a bond election, propositions,” Sherbet said. “So you wanna study these things and not look at them for the first time when you get to the voting booth.”

“Knowing your ballot, getting your sample and being prepared to vote might mean the difference between getting out of there in two minutes or getting out of there in eight or ten minutes,” Garcia said.

Mail in-ballots must be back by 7 p.m. Nov. 3 or postmarked by that time. There are some exceptions. One of those is for people in the military out of the country.