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They didn’t set a record, but the thousands of Bexar County voters who turned out for the first day of in-person early voting Tuesday weren’t about to let the long lines and unseasonably hot weather deter them from having their voices heard at the ballot box.
“In the last election, a lot of my friends were like, ‘Oh, my vote doesn’t matter, it’s not going to make a difference,’” said Denise Flores at the St. Paul Community Center mega site on the West Side. “But, yes, it does.”
At the end of Tuesday, 33,111 people had cast ballots in Bexar County.
That’s not a new high; in 2016, 35,431 people voted on the first day of in-person early voting. Of course, none of these figures include mail-in ballots, and there have been significantly more mail ballots this year than in 2016. Nearly 50,000 have already come into the elections office and hundreds are pouring in daily; in 2016, the entire total was about 39,000.
2020 Voter Guide: A roadmap of the races, candidates and issues on the ballot
The lines were longest Tuesday at the city’s traditionally most heavily visited sites, including Lions Field, Wonderland Mall and the Maverick and Universal City branch libraries, where voters waited more than four hours because of the huge turnouts.
Thousands more are expected to head to the polls again today, but Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said he expects the lines will move more quickly as poll workers get into a daily rhythm.
“The system will get better as we move along, and we’ll try our best to work it out where people aren’t having to stay in line too long,” Wolff said.
“Exercising your right to vote, people are determined to do it, and I’m so glad they’re doing it,” he added. “We’re delighted that we’re having a big vote.”
County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, who has been pushing for more polling sites and extended early voting hours for months, said he would have liked to have had about 60 sites — there are 48 countywide — but he noted the difficulty of recruiting and training election workers during the pandemic.
He said the county is seeking ways to redirect voters to polling sites with shorter waits, including possibly assigning workers the task of monitoring site wait times and advising voters about shorter wait options.
“The more we can get the word out, in terms of outreach and what may be down the street, or a couple of miles away, can save you some time,” Rodriguez said.
“We’ve got to keep it in perspective,” he added. “There’s 18 days , and we’re telling folks, ‘Yes, it’s nice to get it done in the first day or two, but we’ve got three weeks to get this done.’”
He noted the Frank Garrett Multi Center, 1226 NW 18th St. on the West Side, and Granados Adult and Senior Center, 500 Freiling on the Northwest Side, had little to no waiting throughout the day. The Express-News has a list of the early voting locations that are the busiest and the least busy at mysanantonio.com
Some seasoned voters suggest waiting until 30 minutes before polls close, particularly during the second week of early voting, when waits typically are shorter. This year, early voting has been extended to three weeks; early voting ends Oct. 30.
Rodriguez said he would have liked to have had an app in place that shows wait times at each site, but the county didn’t have time to implement one.
Legal issues
As voters were casting ballots around the county, officials used the backdrop of the Double Height Courtroom at the Bexar County Courthouse to unveil a plan to maintain the integrity of the election.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe D. Gonzales announced the creation of an election response team, to be available to county Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen and her staff from now until Election Day.
The team is made up of five prosecutors — including two chiefs — designed to assist election officials with questions or issues.
“We are doing anything we can to make sure our voters can vote safely,” the district attorney said.
With a divided country, a heated national election and a pandemic, officials said this year’s elections are posing challenges they’ve never witnessed.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Wolff said.
On ExpressNews.com: Early voting as pandemic continues will be different
Poll workers not only have to field scores of voters likely to shatter records for turnout but they also will have to make sure each person who enters a voting site is using a machine that has been sanitized to protect against the spread of COVID-19, Wolff said.
“It takes a lot of effort. It’s time-consuming,” he said. “Plus, there’s other complexities, like people can no longer vote straight party. (Voting) will take longer to do.”
Gonzales said he recognizes the election is contentious, particularly at the presidential level, and asked the public not to take the law into their own hands if they feel harassed as they try to vote.
Instead, he said, “alert the election judge, the elections office and call the police,” Gonzales said.
He said his team will be available to Callanen and her staff to provide clarity on polling site questions and resolve any issues from the start of early voting through Election Day.
Gonzales said his team handles inquiries only from the elections office staff.
Complaints from citizens about the elections process first must be reported to the elections office. If there is harassment, elections officials should be informed, and the issue reported to law enforcement, so the DA’s Office can thoroughly investigate the allegations, Gonzales said.
Also Tuesday, state District Judge Karen Pozza ruled that Bexar County must add 18 polling sites on Election Day so there will be 302 locations, the same as there were in 2018. The order came as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project on behalf of MOVE Texas and the Texas Organizing Project.
Wolff indicated the county likely won’t appeal Pozza’s order.
“I personally thought we had enough” polling sites, Wolff said, noting that voters will be allowed to cast ballots at any site on Election Day just as they do during early voting.
“And about 70 percent of the voters are already going to have voted by Election Day,” he said. “But that being said, I’ve asked Jacque — we haven’t see the final court order yet — I’ve asked Jacque to work real hard on finding some additional sites. She’s doing that right now, rounding up the equipment that we may need for it.”
Early glitches
When the polls first opened Tuesday morning at the St. Paul center, voters were having to wait up to two hours, partly because there was just one functioning laptop to validate voters’ registration.
The center is one of the county’s four mega sites designed to provide extra space for social distancing during the pandemic.
But by the time Flores arrived at the site with 10-year-old daughter Annalise Villanueva after the school day ended, the glitches had been fixed and the process was flowing more smoothly with the wait down to about 30 minutes.
The day’s start was better at Our Lady of the Lake University, where the college’s first polling site in history opened to the joyful sounds of live mariachi music reverberating across the West Side.
The university is observing its 125th anniversary. The voting site is at the library.
George Williams, vice president of student affairs at OLLU, said the polling site on “this sacred campus” will help shape “the next generation of leaders.”
Theresa Lankford, one of the first people to cast a ballot at the new polling location, said she and her husband, Roland, chose it because they expected few people to be there. And they didn’t have long to wait.
The year has been a tough one for them. Their son was hit with COVID-19, and was in intensive care for a week.
“It was the most devastating thing that my husband and I have ever faced. But he’s doing well now, thank God,” said Lankford, 62.
Traditionally, the couple participate in early voting at Lions Field. This was the first time they cast ballots on the first day, choosing the new site so they could get “in and out.”
Lankford said she was voting for former Vice President Joe Biden.
“With the COVID, that’s the most important reason that we’re out here, because it’s not a hoax,” she said. “It happened to us, and it can happen to anyone.”
Patience reigns
While there were a few frayed tempers, people for the most part endured the waiting patiently.
At the Claude Black Center on the East Side, voters were getting to know each other as they waited in the blazing sun for more than three hours for their chance to vote.
“By the time we get in the door, we’ll all be family,” chuckled Juan Green, 60.
Green and others in line said they had misgivings about voting by mail. So they cleared their schedules and voted in person the first chance they could, arriving promptly after the polls opened. Their line snaked around the perimeter of the center’s parking lot.
“We got here dreamin’ about breakfast, and now we’re dreamin’ about lunch,” Joseph Trusty, 62, said to laughter from fellow voters.
Voting “is a mission. We’re doing our job,” said Green, in line next to Trusty.
“Yeah, we’re on a mission for change,” said Olivia Fenner, 57, nodding alongside them.
Fenner became more impassioned about politics after the killings of two of her sons. Five years ago, her 16-year-old was fatally shot in San Antonio, she said. And on June 18, in Albany, N.Y., her 34-year-old son was killed in a drive-by shooting on his day off, she said.
“It really changed me. It made me care about gun violence. It’s out of control. How are they getting these?” she said. “I wish there was no guns.”
On the North Side, a line of more than 250 people snaked around the Brook Hollow Library on Tuesday morning. Nearly everyone wore face masks. Some voters brought coffee, bottled water or portable chairs, in addition to their ID cards.
“I was watching the news and I saw what happened in Georgia — all the smart people had chairs,” said Mary Miller, who arrived at the library right after polls opened.
Three hours later, Miller, a U.S Navy veteran, still was waiting behind nearly 50 other people. She passed the time in a blue camping chair, a cloth mask covering her face as she read on her phone.
Miller, who is in her 40s, said that she always votes at Brook Hollow. But this was the first year she’s seen a line of voters stretched across multiple blocks, waiting for hours.
“This is too important not to be here,” Miller said. “Too many people did the work years ago, and I need to do my part today to make sure we have fair and equal access to the polls.”
In the early afternoon, a line of more than 100 people crawled around the sidewalk outside the Alzafar Shrine Auditorium, one of the new mega vote centers.
It was the second polling location Amber Hosier had visited Tuesday. The operating room nurse at Brooke Army Medical Center said she usually doesn’t cast her ballot on the first day of early voting. But she had the day off.
Hosier brought along her 2-year-old daughter, who wore a bright red T-shirt that read, “Mommy’s American Cutie.” They earlier had stopped by Parman Library in Stone Oak. But after waiting two hours there, getting halfway to the polls, Hosier had to leave to take the toddler to a pediatric checkup.
Waiting at Alzafar Shrine, armed this time with snacks and an umbrella for shade, Hosier said she had expected a large turnout because of the high-stakes election. She said she would vote for President Donald Trump because of his financial policies and handling of the pandemic.
“I want to get out of the masks. I want to get out of the coronavirus. I feel like at the hospital, we’re seeing less and less and less,” she said. “I’ve been working this whole time through it — I have yet to get the coronavirus. My kids are going to full-time school — they started in August — and they’ve done just fine.”
Both sides present
At the Lions Field Adult and Senior Center on Broadway, Joseph Michael wore a red ‘Make America Great Again” cap, holding up a “Trump/Pence” sign. He sat in a lawn chair by his car, its bumper covered in Trump stickers and his trunk, wide open, stacked with Trump merchandise.
“Thank you for this!” a woman said passing by him, accepting a Trump sticker he offered.
This is why Michael said he was out here — to interact with fellow Trump supporters and show solidarity.
“I saw some of Biden’s people here holding up signs, so I thought I’d stop here and set up, so we have a presence,” he said. His shirt read “Liberalism: find a cure” underneath a blue ribbon symbol.
Michael said he planned to vote for Trump on Wednesday, mainly because he believes the Trump administration has created more jobs for Americans.
On ExpressNews.com: Bexar County on pace for record turnout before early voting starts
On the deep South Side, a line of about 70 people trickled out of the room used for voting at Palo Alto College’s Performing Arts Building, another mega vote center.
Outside, Lee Cloud, a 52-year-old electronic technician, was clambering into his car, his “I voted’ sticker on the seat as he stripped off his protective gloves and removed his face shield.
“We didn’t want to be deterred from voting if someone was sounding sick behind or in front of us, so we geared up,” he said.
Cloud said it’s not usual for him to vote the very first day of early voting. But he was particularly fired up this election.
“This is unique for me, but it’s probably better to do it this early all the time,” he said. “Everything about it was beautiful.”
Voters formed two long lines at the county-owned AT&T Center, the mega vote site on the East Side, as voting was conducted in the entry concourse on the east end of the Spurs arena, with free parking just east of the building. People with disabilities are provided access to voting machines at a VIP southeast entry.
Linda Garza, who was among the first voters at the AT&T Center, said she heard about the mega centers, and the arena is the closest one to her home. She timed the voting process, from the point she got in line to casting her ballot, at one hour and three seconds.
“Usually I wait until a couple or three days, maybe a week,” she said, to cast a ballot during the early voting period. “But I was determined to get out here first thing, because I wanted my vote to really count this time, and I didn’t want to wait in long lines. I was expecting there were going to be lots of long lines.”
She had no complaints.
“I think this is a great place to come,” Garza said. “If people have the opportunity to come here, I think it’s best.”
At the Bexar County Elections Department site downtown, a line stretched through the hallway, out the door and around a corner Tuesday morning.
“I think people are probably anxious to get their vote in, have it counted, make sure it counts,” said Ann Ryan, a professor of social science at the University of Texas at San Antonio who took a break from working at home to cast her ballot.
She didn’t pack any snacks, but “had a lot of coffee before I came,” she said.
People in line there mostly kept the recommended social distance, and everyone wore a mask. A woman descended from a wheelchair in her car to vote. A group of folks skirted past the line to drop off mail-in ballots.
Beverly and William Tweedy, a couple living in Stone Oak, drove downtown to make sure their mail ballots were securely received.
“Right now, I really don’t trust the mail, so I wanted to make sure I brought it right to the main site,” said Beverly Tweedy, 66. It’s the only location in Bexar County where mail ballots can be hand-delivered by voters, who must sign in and show a photo ID before the ballot is accepted.
“We don’t trust anybody,” William Tweedy, 69, joked. He said they drove by to check out the line at Parman Library, but “that bad boy was all the way out to the main street.”
They both lamented the chaos that has permeated elections in recent years.
“Voting rights has become more of a war. It’s worse than a football game,” said William Tweedy, who served 24 years in the Air Force.
Both of them suffer from underlying health conditions. He has high blood pressure and is battling prostate cancer. She has hypertension and requires continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, therapy at night. They qualified for mail-in ballots because of these conditions and their age, they said.
The couple said they support Biden. To them, voting isn’t about party, but acting on one’s personal conscience.
“I see more chaos than anything being accomplished,” said William Tweedy.
Want to be heard
Maria Tamayo, 67, and her husband Antonio Tamayo, 73, voted for just the second time in their life — their first time was for former congressman Beto O’Rourke in the 2018 midterms.
They speak only Spanish, and suffer from underlying health conditions. This year, they’ll be voting for “el señor Biden.”
“We don’t have a lot of experience in this,” said Maria Tamayo. “But we want the Latino voice to be heard.”
They said few people in their Northwest Side neighborhood vote. But they voted in hopes of getting “better benefits.”
“They say, “they (politicians) make promises and don’t follow through with them,’” said Maria Tamayo. “But we have to at least try.”
Antonio Tamayo, a retired school custodian, said he only makes $680 a month in retirement benefits — “not enough.”
They have a lot of medical bills — they both have diabetes and high blood pressure, and “that costs a lot,” Antonio Tamayo said.
“People should make the effort to vote. Because it could help resolve all the problems we have,” his wife said.
Scott Huddleston covers Bexar County government and the Alamo for the San Antonio Express-News. To read more from Scott, become a subscriber. shuddleston@express-news.net | Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
