This story has been updated.
Bexar County elections administrators are expecting a larger voter turnout than usual — about 700,000 out of the 1,219,000 who have registered so far — for the Nov. 8 election.
Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said the number of registered voters has continued to increase since 2020, when the county had 1,211,000 registered voters. She anticipates the turnout for the Nov. 8 election will be similar to 2018’s turnout.
“This is an unusual general election cycle,” said Callanen. “There’s a lot of emotion out there, a lot of activity, so we’re gonna see if that will translate through Election Day. … It will be less than the presidential, but it should be higher, based on the number of registered voters.
Callanen referred to the high-profile governor’s race in the wake of several hot-button political issues.
She recently expressed to commissioners a growing concern among educators about the use of schools as polling places, particularly in the wake of the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde that left 21 people dead.
At a press conference Wednesday, Callanen commended the North East and Northside independent school districts for making Election Day a school holiday for the safety of students and voters. She added that the elections office, which will be a polling place, will have an increase in security measures for elected officials and voters.
Callanen said they don’t anticipate any issues similar to the last election, when 22% of mail-in ballots were rejected. Though it was a “rocky experience” that involved paper and envelope shortages, she said the elections office came up with a solution that helped avoid ballot rejection.
In the May election and primary runoff, Callanen said they added an insert to tell voters to include both their Texas driver’s license number and Social Security number on their mail-in ballot.
“I can’t tell you how many times that helped,” she said.
The rejection rate fell to 1.3% after the inserts were included.
Callanen said the elections office tracks precinct-based voter turnout to determine where people want to vote. At least 40% vote outside their precinct, meaning people aren’t voting near their home and instead are going to the location nearest to their workplace or childcare center, she said.
“It’s exactly the model that we have for early voting. That’s where the whole methodology has come from,” she said. “The voters are telling us where they want to go, and what’s amazing is the voters choose mainly to go back to our early voting sites, because those are the highest turnout sites that we have.”
Callanen said the elections office is “where it should be,” in terms of staffing and volunteers and added the average age of voters is slowly coming down as younger people sign up to work the polls.
The elections office is also partnering with San Antonio Veterans For America to have a vet at each voting center.
The elections office is still working on keeping the maximum number of voting sites open on Election Day, as they’re still getting permission and insurance for some locations. For now, 267 polling places will be open.
Bexar County commissioners added $200,000 into the budget they passed Tuesday to fund 43 additional Election Day polling places that Callanen says aren’t needed.
“Imagine a [polling] site where we have … at least three election officials sitting there all day long. They’re getting one voter an hour, and it usually isn’t one voter an hour.
“We’re following what the voters are telling us,” she said.
Callanen added her office is also dealing with about 50 open records requests from the last elections.
“We do have a myriad of those requests right now. And we’re working in conjunction with the district attorney’s office to turn those around,” she said. “We are also knee-deep, literally, into the preparations for the November 2022 election, so it’s working in parallel with us again.”
Callanen said September is Voter Registration Month and encouraged the public to register before the Oct. 11 deadline.
For questions about registering to vote, call the Elections Department at 210-335-VOTE (8683).
Staff reporter Andrea Drusch contributed to this story.
