Early voting begins in Texas, giving voters a head start on Election Day

ABILENE, Texas – Early voting in Texas began Monday with lines out the door at several polling locations.

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“The United States government requires us to pay our taxes and vote, and that is what we must do,” said Dr. Paul Fabrizio, Professor of Political Science.

While some see voting as a civic duty, Dr. Fabrizio, it is an opportunity to put control in the hands of the people.

“Here we give consent to the people who will serve us,” said Dr. Fabrizio. “This is our chance to say, ‘I like you, I don’t like you.’ So this is really, really important.

In Texas, early voting begins about two weeks before Election Day.

“The cool thing about early voting is that you vote and then you forget about it,” Fabrizio said. “When you see these commercials, you get these mailers in the mail that you can just ignore because you’ve already done your job.”

While many wait until November 5th to cast their vote, Fabrizio tells us that the early bird often gets the worm.

“We don’t know if there’s going to be a heavy rainstorm, a hurricane or snow somewhere else, so this way you have a lot of opportunities to vote beforehand,” Fabrizio said.

Fabrizio tells us that voting in local elections is incredibly important given the approximately 90,000 registered voters in Taylor County.

“In the last elections it was the case that about half of the voters went to vote early and the other half only on election day,” said Fabrizio. “I’ve been around politics for more than 40 years, and in fact it was the Republicans who were the first to really push early voting because it’s a way to find out whether voters are actually going to the polls and whether they’re not going to vote early “You can then drive them to the polls on election day.”

Fabrizio said that the parties had now turned around.

“In recent elections, Democrats are more likely to vote early and Republicans are more likely to vote on Election Day itself,” Fabrizio said.