More than 22,000 El Pasoans cast ballots on the first day of early voting for the 2026 election Monday, 90% more than at the same point in the last midterm election in 2022.
Turnout on the first day of early voting was the second highest on record for an El Paso midterm election surpassed only by 2018, when El Pasoan Beto O’Rourke was the Democratic nominee for Senate against Republican Ted Cruz. O’Rourke lost the election by 2.6 percentage points, the best performance by a Democrat in a statewide election since 1994.
One of the early voting sites, at the Enrique Moreno El Paso County Courthouse, was closed most of the day after the building was evacuated because of smoke on higher floors. That voting site was responsible for 264 ballots on the first day of early voting in 2022 and 998 in 2018. The courthouse voting site will reopen at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
El Paso’s busiest early voting site historically is Bassett Place in Central El Paso. Throughout the lunch hour Monday, voters stood in a line more than 100 deep for 30 minutes or more to cast their ballots.
More than 17,500 people voted at an early voting site Monday, the most ever for the first day of early voting in a midterm election. The early voting total includes almost 5,000 mail ballots received by the elections office, double the number in 2022 but less than the 6,200 received on the first day of early voting in 2018.
County Elections Administrator Lisa Wise said about 9,500 mail ballots had been requested and sent to voters so far, similar to the number in 2022. Texas restricts mail-in voting to people older than 65, with disabilities, or people who will be out of town during the election season.
Voters older than 65 account for the bulk of mail voters in El Paso. The number of registered voters over that age in El Paso has grown by 30% in the past four years to more than 115,000, a reflection of the county’s rapidly aging population, an El Paso Matters analysis shows.
Mail-in balloting has been a point of contention and confusion this year. The Trump administration has proposed a number of steps to restrict mail-in voting, but has generally been blocked by courts from implementing the efforts.
An increasing number of voters are skeptical that the U.S. Postal Service can deliver election mail in a timely manner, a recent poll indicates.
“The number one thing we are telling voters is that once you receive the ballot, don’t wait to send it back,” Wise said. “The mail can take longer than a voter anticipates and if we have to send something back for correction that also adds time.
“If you still have the ballot and have not mailed it a week before the election, we recommend dropping it at the drop box on Election Day on the Campbell Street side of the County Courthouse,” she said.
The post El Paso’s first-day early voting turnout jumps 90% over 2022 appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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