It was a full house at the Harris County Elections Technology Center throughout the weekend as workers handed off equipment to election judges preparing their respective vote centers ahead of Tuesday's March 5 Primary Election Day.

As of Saturday afternoon, according to Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, roughly 200 judges out of the 545 had checked in and picked up their materials.

“This is the last piece of the rodeo, if you will,” Hudspeth said. “So, when we have a lot of folks picking up this early with still a full Sunday, it makes us feel really good that they are going to be set up ready to go Tuesday morning,” she said.

Similar to the November general election, there will be six rally sites where election judges will drop off their required materials, which will then be transferred to the technology center by a secure network of law enforcement.

Hudspeth said unlike last year, when NRG – where the central count occurred — served as one of these sites, the technology center where the final tallying of votes is taking place this time will not function as a rally site due to capacity constraints of the location.

“With a county this size, it’s not a good idea to have everybody go to the same site at the same time for protective measures or security measures or things of that nature,” she added.

Hudspeth said the early voting period, which ended last week, was successful, with over 200,000 in-person and ballot-by-mail early voters casting their votes — despite a couple of minor operational issues.

She added that these included a small closure due to a power outage at one of the 79 early vote centers and a possible gas leak at another. However, election workers were able to get generators out to the location affected by the outage and contacted CenterPoint Energy to get those polls opened up. There were no full-day closures as a result of these two incidents.

Another issue was the AT&T outage that occurred the first week of early voting and interrupted their phone networks and communications. The vote centers and electronic poll books did not encounter these problems because there are backup MP 70s and MiFis — routers that act as mobile Wi-Fi hotspot devices.

“If we have connectivity issues, these immediately kick in,” Hudspeth said. “So, we were still able to vote voters. No suspension of voting took place during that time frame.”

She added that mail ballots had been received, and applications for ballot-by-mail were sent out on time as of early February, despite concerns in January regarding delays that the United States Postal Service was experiencing due to a software upgrade that did caused some delays for the elections staff.

Hudspeth said one of their biggest challenges going into the March 5 primary was the number of election workers volunteering to help out. The Harris County Clerk's Office Elections Department is planning to do a campaign ahead of the November to generate interest in helping out with election operations.

"Without election workers, elections don’t work. You think this election’s big, November is going to be three times bigger," she said. "In the springtime primaries are different. Children are still in school, spring break and so many things are happening so we don’t get as many volunteers."

Hudspeth estimates that more than 200,000 voters could flock to the polls on Election Day based on turnout from previous years.

Rice University political science professor Bob Stein said voter turnout has been lower than he expected during early voting. However, he added that it is difficult to compare specifically Democratic voter turnout this year to the last presidential primary election year in 2020 because there are more registered voters, and the average age of these voters is decreasing.

“What we expect as the age of registered voters goes down, the turnout might go down because younger voters tend not to vote,” Stein said.

“If this turnout looks pretty robust — and I think it will be — I think it will be at comparable levels for 2020, you’ll be seeing a different kind of voter in the Democratic primary,” he added. “One that is decidedly younger and decidedly more progressive.”

Stein said he is waiting to see how many Republican voters show up, as most of the action in terms of competitive races is on the Democratic side.

Nancy Sims, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston, said people need to remember that primaries set up this year’s November general election.

“Primaries are a predictor. They are our outcome event,” Sims said. “There are so many races in November in Harris County that are unopposed, and that’s true in congressional districts across the state, too.”
According to Hudspeth, there are 119 Democratic races and 122 Republican races on the ballot in total for Harris County. However, depending on the party a voter chooses and where they live, they should expect between 56 and 65 contests on their ballot.

She said over 7,000 individuals will be working on Election Day, including Democratic and Republican election judges — one from each party at all of the 545 vote centers — election workers with each party assisting voters and election technicians stationed at each vote center and in the field to address any issues that arise.

Voters who vote on Election Day can head to any of these vote centers on Tuesday, March 5, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. All mail-in ballots need to be postmarked by 5 p.m. on Election Day.

Voters who received a mail-in ballot can surrender their ballots at the Harris County Clerk’s downtown Office at 1001 Preston St. Houston, Texas 77002, or any vote center and vote by regular ballot if they are concerned about mailing their ballots sent in on time.

Voters surrendering their mail-in ballots at polling locations must bring their mail-in ballots with them, or they will have to vote by provisional ballot.