Dallas County Election Eve: 444 Places to Vote on Tuesday, 600,000 Ballots Already In, and the Line Rule That Matters at 7
More than 600,000 Dallas County voters have already voted. As many as 891,101 have not. Every one of them can use any of 444 polling places on Tuesday — and anyone standing in line at 7 p.m. votes, no matter how long the line runs.
Dallas County goes into Election Day with the arithmetic already half done. More than 600,000 ballots were cast here during early voting, out of 1,498,987 registered voters — which, as D Magazine's election-eve guide points out, leaves anywhere from one to 891,101 people who can still head to the polls on Tuesday. They will have 444 polling locations to choose from, and because Dallas County votes at countywide vote centers, a registered Dallas County voter can cast a ballot at any one of them. The county's interactive map shows wait times, which rewards a voter with two equidistant options and a deadline.
The hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with the one rule worth memorizing: if you are in line when 7 p.m. strikes, you can still vote — stay in line. Lines form before work, over lunch and after work, and some places are reliably worse than others; the Oak Lawn Library took 3,012 voters on the final day of early voting alone and is one of the busiest locations in the county every election. Bring one of the seven accepted forms of photo ID — a Texas driver's license, a state personal ID card or a U.S. passport among them. One trap deserves its own sentence: Texans on the state's voter suspense list — more than 1.2 million earlier this year — could cast limited ballots only during early voting, which has ended; anyone unsure of their status should call the county elections office before heading out, not after.
If something goes wrong at the check-in table, the guide's help chain runs in order: start with the election judge at your polling location; then the Dallas County elections department at 469-627-8683; then the Texas Secretary of State's elections division at 800-252-VOTE; or the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE, by phone or text. Tuesday's forecast, on the station's live feed, is showers rather than the deluge feared earlier in the weekend. Four hundred forty-four doors open at seven in the morning. The only remaining variable in Dallas County is how many people walk through one.
