Texas Democrats, including US Rep. Lloyd Doggett, rallied outside a polling place in Austin on Monday during the first day of in-person early voting (Photo by Matt Hennie)
Democrats rallied in Austin to get out the vote to support Colin Allred, local races and scores of ballot measures, including ones funding public schools and affordable childcare.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on Oct. 22 to add early vote totals from Tarrant County and revised statewide totals from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.
Some 870,721 Texans headed to the polls on Monday, the first day of in-person early voting in the state.
That total — 4.68% of the state’s 18,623,931 registered voters — includes 126,289 ballots cast in Harris County, 58,247 in Tarrant County, 56,074 in Dallas County and 46,820 in Bexar County, according to statewide numbers from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.
In Travis County, 46,611 ballots were cast, a record number surpassing the 35,873 people who voted on the first day of in-person early voting during the presidential election in 2020, according to Travis County Clerk Dyana Limon-Mercado.
As early voting opened on Monday, Democrats rallied outside the Carver Branch of the Austin Public Library to urge people to head to the polls.
“Take a close look at those candidates at the top of the ballot,” US Rep. Lloyd Doggett said. “If you look carefully and think about it, it’s not just names that are there but educational opportunity, freedom and healthcare — particularly freedom for women and safety in their healthcare. It’s about the climate crisis. It’s about gun safety. So many issues that are there between the names where you have a very crystal clear choice.”
US Rep. Greg Casar — like Doggett, an Austin Democrat — said undecided voters in Texas are concerned about the economy. He urged them to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Colin Allred, who is locked in a tight US Senate race with Sen. Ted Cruz.
“Today, Travis County Democrats and Democrats all throughout Texas can send Ted Cruz back to Cancún,” Casar said. “Elect Colin Allred. We can have a president we can be proud of. We can have a senator who cares about us and we can have a better economic future for ourselves and for our families if we all get out and vote.”
Allred, who voted with his wife Alexandra Eber on Monday in Dallas, has been barnstorming across the state since his Oct. 15 debate with Cruz in Dallas. Allred met with phone bank volunteers in Austin on Friday, rallied with block walkers in Round Rock on Saturday and attended church in Houston on Sunday.
Austin City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes urged voters to pay attention to local races and propositions on their ballots. (Photo by Matt Hennie)
The importance of down ballot races
But despite excitement among Texas Democrats about the top of the ticket races, Austin City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes urged voters to pay attention to local races. Fuentes said her ballot stretched to four pages and that nearly 20% of voters don’t make it past federal and state races when they vote.
“One in five voters will get to the ballot box and not vote for their local representatives,” Fuentes said. “We have to change that because there’s so much that your council members and mayors throughout our county are deciding that affect your day to day life, from the power that you use to light your homes to the water that we drink to how you’re able to get around our city.”
Voters in four cities, including Dallas, face ballot measures to decriminalize weed. Voters in Travis County will see Proposition A, a property tax increase that would fund access to affordable childcare. Austin ISD’s Proposition A would increase property taxes to support the local school system. Voters in Dallas face a total of 18 propositions on their ballot.
“In the absence of state leadership, when our state lawmakers are not focused on the issues that matter most to Texans, it’s your local electeds who stand up,” Fuentes said.
“We as Democrats will continue to support, and we need everyone to support, representatives that are going to fight for bodily autonomy, they are going to right for reproductive freedom, and they are going to stand to ensure that we have the protection that we deserve,” she added.
State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat, took aim at Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt Gov. Dan Patrick, criticizing them for passing the state’s near-total abortion ban, underfunding public schools and right-wing measures targeting marginalized communities.
“They are taking rights away,” Eckhardt said. “They are contracting our access to public education, contracting our access to healthcare, including reproductive healthcare. They are contracting our access as parents. They are destroying our privacy. They are in our boardrooms, in our bedrooms, in our classrooms, in our examining rooms.”
“So, take it back by voting,” she added.
Early voting ends Nov. 1. Voters can cast a ballot at any polling location in the county where they are registered. The state’s 18.62 million registered voters is a record, some 5% higher than the 17.67 million people on the voter rolls ahead of the November 2022 election, according to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson.
Pooja Sethi, chair of the Travis County Democratic Party, offered a blunt assessment of why it’s critical for registered voters to cast their ballot.
“It is the most important election of at least my lifetime, most of our lifetimes,” Sethi said. “Democracy is on the line.”
