With the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 8 general election less than a week away, Bexar County elections officials once again reminded residents to update their personal information.
“The reason why we want everyone to change their address, update their address, update their name [is] because when they choose to come and vote on the November 8 election, it matters who they get to vote for,” said Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen during a press conference Wednesday at Collins Garden Library, one of the polling sites for Election Day.
The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 11. As of Wednesday, Callanen said there are 1,226,000 registered voters in Bexar County, up from 1,211,000 registered voters in 2020.
“If we could figure out how to turn them into voters, we’d be all set,” said Callanen.
San Antonio Public Library Director Ramiro Salazar, who joined Callanen, said libraries that are undergoing renovations will not interfere with voting sites at those libraries.
“We coordinate very closely,” said Salazar. “If a particular branch or a particular site will be closed, we give enough advance notice for Jacque to explore other opportunities.”
The announcement comes after the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to keep Bexar County election officials from closing roughly 40 Election Day polling locations.
Callanen said she had not seen that lawsuit and therefore could not offer comment.
In September, Callanen said 267 polling places would be open on election day. That number was the same on Wednesday.
“We’ve increased the number of polling sites to 51,” Callanen said. “What we’ve seen is mainly, in our analysis, 40 to 45% of our voters on Election Day [are] voting out of their precinct.”
In September, Callanen said additional Election Day polling places weren’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.
On Tuesday, she said any time a voter walks into an election site, there will be a poster where they can find at least four additional nearby polling places they can go to instead if lines are long.
“It’s a conundrum. It’s very difficult for us to have election staff tied up when we have poll sites seeing four voters the entire day or 25 voters the entire day,” she said.
The elections department is still handling incoming open records requests from the 2020 elections, which are coming from New York and Washington, Callanen said, adding those requests are because of misinformation surrounding that election. She said the department is working to address those requests.
