Know Before You Go in Dallas County: 444 Places to Vote, Any One of Them Yours, and Lines That Form Three Times a Day
More than 600,000 Dallas County voters have already voted in person. For everyone else, Tuesday is the last door — and the county runs it the flexible way: 444 polling locations, and your ballot counts at any of them.
The arithmetic of Dallas County's Election Day starts with who is left. More than 600,000 people cast ballots in person during early voting — the county's daily reports put the in-person figure at 607,886 through Friday — out of 1,498,987 registered voters. Everyone else has Tuesday: polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m., and the standing Texas rule protects the end of the line — if you are in line when 7 p.m. strikes, you can still vote, so stay in line.
The county's flexibility is the voter's best tool. There are 444 polling locations on Election Day, and Dallas County's vote-center system means you can vote at any of them — the one by home, the one by work, or the one whose line is shortest. The county's interactive map gauges wait times, and picking a second option before you leave is the cheapest insurance in the guide D Magazine assembled for county voters. Some sites are reliably heavy: Oak Lawn Library drew 3,012 voters on the final day of early voting and ranks among the busiest locations every election. Lines form in three waves — before work, during lunch and after work — and the hours between the waves are the quiet ones.
Bring a plan for the problems, too. Your exact ballot is at dallascountyvotes.org. If something goes wrong at the check-in table, the guide's three numbers are the county elections department at 469-627-8683, the Texas Secretary of State's elections division at 800-252-VOTE, and the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE. Dallas County has already set records in this election — a record first day, a record early vote. Tuesday decides how the story ends, and it ends at 7 p.m.
