When Patricia Denkins entered the voting booth Monday morning, she was thinking about her mother, who had to sacrifice the family grocery budget to pay a $2 poll tax here in Houston.
Despite talk of anxiety among many of Denkins’ fellow early voters, the southwest Houston resident said she always feels “hopeful” when she casts her ballot.
“I’ve been voting since I was 18,” said Denkins, who is in her 70s. “There’s no excuse. I’ve run in to vote in the pouring rain before.”
The weather, thankfully, was beautiful for much of the morning and afternoon as lines stretched around many of Harris County’s 88 vote centers, some forming early in the morning before polls opened at 7 a.m. By the end of the day, more than 125,400 in-person votes had been cast, according to a post on X from the Harris County Clerk’s office. Another 27,000 mail ballots were returned.
After absorbing months of campaigning, debates, primary elections, a late substitution of one of the two major party presidential nominees and two assassination attempts against the other one, voting for the Nov. 5 elections officially is underway in the Houston area and across Texas.
Voters’ focus largely was on the presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, but more than 250 state and local elections, including a $4.4 billion Houston ISD bond referendum, also are on the ballot.
With that in mind, voters who spoke to the Houston Landing Monday said it was either excitement or anxiety over the presidential race that drove them to cast their ballots at the first possible opportunity.
After voting at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, Denkins said she felt “hope” for the future. She then drove to a nearby early voting tailgate party, where she joined a dozen people enjoying mimosas, breakfast tacos and a live DJ. The group took a break from their food to dance to the Cupid Shuffle.
Not all were feeling the joy on the first day of early voting, though.
“It’s waking me up at night,” said Ruth Atkinson, a 67-year-old who lives in the Third Ward. “My doctor is having to tell me to take a deep breath, be calm and we’ll get through this.”
Atkinson walked to the polling place at Texas Southern University’s recreation center shortly after it opened “to get it over with,” although she said she was proud to vote for Harris. She now plans to manage her nerves by doing what she can to help her fellow senior home residents vote by organizing a shuttle to the vote center in the coming days.
Brian Brewer, a 56-year-old from Cypress, waited in line at Juergen’s Hall Community Center for about an hour midday Monday before casting a vote for Trump.
Brewer said he sees a massive gulf between Trump and Harris’ policy positions, and with polling showing the race in a statistical tie, he said he was nervous about what the coming weeks would bring.
“It used to be a difference of opinion, but now, it’s literally good versus evil, in my opinion,” Brewer said.
That anxiety showed in the timing of Brewer’s vote. He said he wanted to cast his ballot on the first day of early voting to ensure it would be counted, echoing Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Brewer’s concern about the security of U.S. elections only grew after Harris County saw paper shortages at some polling stations during the 2022 midterms, causing delays for some voters.
“I’m glad everyone is showing up to vote early because I don’t trust the system, unfortunately,” Brewer said.
Victoria Garcia, a 35-year-old who lives in Museum Park, was one of the first people in the state to cast a ballot, just minutes after 7 a.m. She said it was excitement that drove her from her bed to the Texas Southern University Recreation Center to cast a ballot for Harris.
“I wanted to get in and do what I need to do before time gets away from me,” Garcia said. “When you get on the internet, a lot can be polarizing, but I feel like we’re insulated from a lot of that in Harris County.”
A brief, personal connection to one of the candidates got 22-year-old Cypress resident James Schadle excited to vote. Schadle described himself as generally apolitical, but he decided to brave the long line at Juergen’s Hall after recently meeting Trump earlier this month at a fundraiser at Minute Maid Park, where Schadle works as a DJ.
“He just came off as a human being,” Schadle said. “He wasn’t trying to sell me on anything.”
The lines seen at Juergen’s Hall and several other vote centers on Monday are expected to shorten as early voting continues. The first days of early voting typically see the highest traffic before leveling off later in the week, County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said.
The Harris County record for first-day in-person early voting is 128,000 ballots cast in 2020, a spokesperson for the county clerk’s office told the Landing via email.
The clerk’s office has not yet received any paper shortage complaints, and the calls it did receive about technology issues largely were resolved before polls opened this morning, the spokesperson added.
Nonetheless, voters reported waiting up to an hour in line at popular polling locations like Juergen’s Hall and the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center, despite the county’s vote center map showing little to no wait times at most locations throughout the day.
Precinct judges are responsible for updating wait times on the county’s map, the clerk’s spokesperson said, but may have been too busy assisting voters to keep the map updated. The IT department within the clerk’s office is working to improve the accuracy of its map wait times, the spokesperson added.
Early voting runs through Nov. 1. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday this week. On Sunday, polls will be open from noon until 7 p.m.
The last week of early voting will see extended hours at all of the early vote centers. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Oct. 28 through Oct. 30. Halloween will see polls open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. before returning to the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. schedule for the final day of early voting on Nov. 1.
Reporter Tim Carlin contributed to this story.
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