Polls have closed as Texas voting results roll in

Some Central Texas residents who arrived to vote before 7 p.m. Tuesday were still standing in line nearly three hours later.

Texas State University polling location still had about 60 voters in line as of 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Hays County election officials said. The office could not comment on why it was taking so long.

MOVE Texas, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to supporting young voters, showed up at Texas State with pizza, snacks and water around 9:30 p.m.

MOVE Texas is on the ground at Texas State ensuring young people stay in line to vote (two hours after polls were supposed to close.)

We're buying pizzas, waters, & snacks to support young voters. Anything you give helps support the #YouthVote

Chip in: https://t.co/a4nqDj7PSO pic.twitter.com/Z3QOgeNZag

— MOVE Texas (@MOVE_texas) March 4, 2020

Madi Fujawa, a freshman at Texas State University, cast her vote around 9 p.m. after a four-hour wait. She had initially gone earlier in the day, but after 20 minutes of waiting, had to go to her next class.

By the time she came back at 4:50 p.m., the line wrapped all the way around the LBJ Student Center, Fujawa said. Over the next four hours, Fujawa said she talked with friends and did a bit of homework while she waited. Volunteers showed up to hand out pizza and snacks, and everyone was generally in a good mood.

“For me, this election is really important, and I believe a lot of students felt that,” she said. “I don’t think everyone would be so willing to wait that long in line if it wasn’t so crucial.”

The polling location at Texas State had 10 machines, Fujawa said. Although she was happy to wait for a chance to cast a vote, she might take a different route in November.

“I will definitely do early voting,” she said.

In Austin, Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said many of the busiest Austin-area locations also had the fewest voting machines: grocery stores, particularly popular Randalls locations.

“Ever since grocery stores have been opened as polling locations, we’ve had this problem,” DeBeauvoir said. “We think they’re wonderful and our voters seem very tolerant of lines that form there, but they’re not the best use of everyone’s time and resources.”

Voters who were in line by 7 p.m. would be allowed to vote as long as they stayed in line, elections officials said.

Nearly 100 polling locations in Travis County had estimated waits of more than 20 minutes at 8:20 p.m. Tuesday night, according to the Travis County election website. Dozens more had wait times of 10 to 20 minutes.

As of 4 PM over 90,000 people have voted on Election Day in Travis County. If you are in line by 7 PM you can vote. Lines are already long at many locations so get out as soon as possible!

— Travis County Clerk (@TravisCoClerk) March 3, 2020

DeBeauvoir said that as of 7:30 p.m., 131,673 ballots had been cast in Travis County, which is about as many as those from early voting. She predicted Travis County would see 150,000 votes by the end of the night.

The county’s new voting equipment has worked all day and the check-in system takes about a minute per person, DeBeauvoir said.

When two University of Texas seniors saw a tweet about polling lines longer than two hours at the Perry Castaneda Library, they decided to bring board games and $33 worth of Taco Bell to encourage people to stick out the wait.

“As young people, it’s important that we get out there, and I think it’s been cool that we’ve seen a pretty big turnout to the point where we have two-and-a-half hour long lines,” Reagan Weger said. “But I do feel that the fact that we really only have two voting locations for students on a campus with 50,000 people feels like a way to suppress the young vote.”

Voter turnout in Travis County was on pace to break records on Election Day, even though the day got off to a wobbly start with some poll workers not showing up because of fears of the new coronavirus.

More than 90,000 voters in Travis County had cast their ballots by 4:30 p.m. DeBeauvoir said she expected the total voter turnout Tuesday to be around 150,000, which would exceed the primary election day turnout in 2016 and 2018.

Voter turnout on the 2016 primary election day was 120,000 voters, DeBeauvoir said.

Voting was also brisk in Williamson County late Tuesday afternoon with a total of 37,370 voters casting their ballots by 5 p.m.

Voter turnout on the election day in the 2016 primary was 52,916, said Connie Odom, a Williamson County spokeswoman.

Hays County had a total of 8,036 voters show up at the polls by early Tuesday afternoon. Information about its 2016 turnout was not available.

Bastrop County did not have voter turnout numbers late Tuesday afternoon because it uses paper ballots and does not have an electronic way of counting them, a spokesperson said.

Fears of catching the coronavirus disrupted staffing at some voting locations in Travis County at the beginning of the day, DeBeauvoir said.

Eleven people, including judges who were responsible for opening some of the 175 polling locations across the county Tuesday, did not show up for work, she said.

“The election judges said the news was scaring them,” DeBeauvoir said. “The media is hyping this corona thing.”

Other workers also abandoned their posts Tuesday morning after realizing there was not enough staff to open for voting, she said.

As of 9 a.m. Tuesday, she said, Travis County had 164 vacancies after using up all of its emergency backup workers.

DeBeauvoir said this was on top of the 31 judges who had said last week they would not come to operate the polls out of fear of catching the virus or another sickness.

All of the polling locations were back open and running later in the morning, the county clerk said.

Mark Escott, interim medical director and health authority for Austin Public Health, said during a coronavirus briefing Tuesday in Travis County Commissioners Court that he had stood in line to vote and that everyone else in Austin should.

“We should not be afraid to go to our polling places and do our civic duty today,” Escott said. “We should not be afraid today of community spread. There may be some stage in the future where we put out warnings about public interaction, but that’s not today.”

Officials in Williamson, Hays and Bastrop counties said they had no trouble with poll workers showing up Tuesday.

There has always been hand sanitizer and screen wipes available at the polls, but the county has stocked up on those supplies this year, DeBeauvoir said.

“One of the things we’ve had to caution voters about is don’t get Purell on the ballots; it makes them stick,” she said.

At Texas Southern University in Houston, voters stood in line into the early morning hours Wednesday to cast their votes, according to multiple reporters at the university. The last voter cast his vote at 1 a.m.

This is INSANE. These people have been waiting in line to vote for five hours at TSU. Polls closed 4.5 hours ago. pic.twitter.com/PLEJxixini

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) March 4, 2020