The Fight for Control of Congress Enters Its Final Weekend, With Early Voting Nearing 50 Million
More than 49 million Americans have already voted - a midterm record, past 2022's entire early total - with all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats to be decided Tuesday. In Dallas–Fort Worth, what is left is Election Day itself: polls 7 to 7, and three days to be ready for them.
The midterm campaign has reached the weekend where it stops being a campaign and starts being a count. Reuters reported Saturday that more than 49 million Americans have already cast ballots, in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab - nearing 50 million, a record for a midterm election, and already past the nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in the whole of the 2022 midterms. On Tuesday, voters decide all 435 seats in the U.S. House and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, the chambers that will set the terms of the final two years of President Donald Trump's term.
The weekend itself is a collision the wire noted with some amusement: politics, Halloween and college football sharing one Saturday. The president, after a month-long campaign blitz, is not scheduled to travel on Saturday and returns to the trail Sunday in Kansas and Iowa. Underneath the noise, Reuters carried one steadier number: in a September 30 to October 5 survey, 76 percent of voters - a bipartisan majority - said they are confident their ballots will be counted accurately.
For Dallas–Fort Worth, the early-voting chapter is already closed - Texas in-person early voting ended Friday - and what remains is the mechanics of Tuesday. Polls in Dallas County are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on November 3 at the county's vote centers, and a mail ballot can still be delivered in person to Dallas County Elections, 1520 Round Table Drive, by 7 p.m. that day. The propositions at the bottom of the local ballot - the $443 million Dallas public-safety bond among them - were filed by this desk this morning. The final weekend, locally, is for reading them.
