Harris County to have over 80 early voting locations
Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
With just over 50 days left until the Nov. 5 presidential election, Harris County said it plans to have up to 700 polling locations on Election Day with over 80 locations open for early voting to serve the nearly 2.7 million registered voters in the county.
On Friday, the Election Department of the Harris County Clerk's Office released its polling location map on the Harris Votes website. Currently, the map shows 87 early voting locations and 679 Election Day polling centers, but an election department representative said these numbers could change slightly before voting officially begins.
"The number of locations is subject to change, as sometimes vote centers become unavailable or we add additional locations," a representative said in a statement to Houston Public Media. "These changes will be reflected on the vote centers map on the website through Election Day. These numbers will be relatively close to the total amount, over 80 early voting locations and up to 700 Election Day locations."
This is lower than the 122 early voting locations and the 806 Election Day locations open for the November 2020 election. The election department said the "inordinate" high number in 2020 was mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Most vote centers used for the November election have historically been vote centers during early voting and on Election Day," the statement said. "There are not necessarily any note-worthy changes, but some vote centers not in use that were used in 2020 were not available during the dates and times we needed."
Despite over 1.65 million votes being recorded in the official canvass report for the November 2020 election, only approximately 68% of the people registered to vote in Harris County did so.
"Texas voters have until Oct. 7 to register to vote or update their registration with the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector's Office," the statement said. "According to their voter registration statistics page, Harris County has about 2,669,819 registered as of Sept. 3, 2024. We encourage every eligible voter to check their registration status before Oct. 7 and to vote during this election."
In 2020, the Texas Supreme Court upheld an order from Gov. Greg Abbott limiting the number of ballot drop-off locations to one per county. This order is still in effect for the upcoming November election and the only drop-off location will be on the fourth-floor office of the Harris County Administration Building located at 1001 Preston Street in Houston. Voters are also not allowed to drop off a ballot for another person and ballots can only be dropped off on Election Day.
Early voting will begin on Oct. 21 and run until Nov. 1, according to the county website.
The hours of operation are listed below:
Oct. 21 – Oct. 26 — 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 27 — 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 28 – Oct. 30 — 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 31 — 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Election Day (Nov. 5) — 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. (If you are in line before 9 p.m. on Election Day you will still be allowed to vote.)More information and any updates regarding possible location changes can be found on the Harris Votes website.
