By Ashlyn Beck | News Editor, Aidan Pham | LTVN Broadcast Reporter, Braden Murray | LTVN Sports Director
In the already unprecedented 2024 election, early voting numbers are yet another factor causing chaos as the race comes to a head.
LTVN’s Braden Murray and Aidan Pham were on-site at the Hurd Center and heard first-time voters’ point of view on the election.
With far fewer overall early voters than 2020 and far more in-person early votes, the 2024 election continues to surprise voters.
The New York Times reported that more than 80 million people voted early in the 2024 election. Around 38 million of those votes were cast in person, surpassing the 35 million in-person early votes from 2020, according to Newsweek. Despite the number of early in-person voters, mail-in voting rates decreased significantly from the 2020 election.
In the 2020 election, 43.1% of voters did so by mail, bringing the total number of early voters to 101 million. The 2024 election had a little more than 72 million mail-in ballots as of Saturday, Newsweek reported.
Despite the rise in early in-person voting for the U.S. as a whole, Texas had a decline in early voters this election, according to the Texas Tribune. Statistics show that 48.6% of registered Texan voters cast their ballot early — either by mail or in person. In 2020, however, the percentage of early voters topped 57.2% of registered Texan voters.
For McLennan County, many students who were not already registered in the county either changed their address to register in McLennan county or sent a ballot in by mail.
Robinson senior Mianah Dela Cruz voted on Friday, the last day for early voting. In 2020, early voting was largely motivated by fears surrounding COVID-19 and distrust in polling numbers.
For Dela Cruz, however, the pull of early voting was the shorter line.
“I wanted to do early voting just to make sure I was holding myself accountable to vote,” Dela Cruz said.
Dela Cruz knew Election Day lines would be crazy and said that if she saw the long lines, it would be too easy to go home without voting.
“I [felt] like it would be so crazy during Election Day and [wanted to] make sure that my vote was secured in that way,” Dela Cruz said.
College Station junior Miguel Hernandez also hit the polls early for the election. Hernandez also voted early to make sure he beat the lines. While some waited to vote for more than an hour on Election Day at the Mark and Paula Hurd Welcome Center, Hernandez said he completed the process very quickly.
“Because it was my first time voting, I wanted to be on top of it,” Hernandez said. “I started to get anxious because I knew that on Nov. 5 so many people would be voting.”
Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day will continue to be accepted until Wednesday, possibly prolonging the wait so see who will take the prize for one of the most contentious elections in recent history.
