Voter registration in Texas soars ahead of October registration deadline

Thanks to a vibrant Senate campaign, lingering anger on both sides from 2016, a bruising Supreme Court confirmation battle, and focused Get Out The Vote activities throughout the state, Texas will set a new record for voter registration in 2018.
A record number of Texans, almost 15.7 million, are already registered to vote, according to the Secretary of State’s office, as cited by the Dallas Morning-News. Registrations continue to pour in ahead of today’s filing deadline.
According to Texas Public Radio, the Bexar County Elections Office has been forced to staff up to handle up to 1,000 voter applications each day. The County already has a record number of registered voters, 1.1 million, surpassing the 1.05 million in 2016, and the number is expected to increase between now and the start of early voting October 22.
Texas is reaching these numbers despite being “one of 12 states that doesn’t allow online registration, so county elections staff must manually enter applications online,” according to the Morning News.
The Morning News adds, “As of Monday, there were 1.3 million registered voters in Dallas County, 574,620 in Collin, 495,201 in Denton, 62,684 in Rockwall and 1.1 million in Tarrant.”
The Texas Standard estimates that 93 percent of eligible Travis County voters are expected to be registered by the end of today.
Full voter registration information can be found at the Vote Texas website.