Texas will no longer have a three-day gap between the end of early voting and Election Day under a bill passed by the Texas Legislature that is heading to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Currently, Texas ends in-person early voting on the Friday before Election Day and restarts voting on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. for Election Day. But under the new changes, the gap is gone and Texas will essentially have one voting period that runs for 13 days.
“So this means once the voting starts — the same number of early vote days — it just doesn’t stop,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said of the changes.
The bill by state Sen. Bob Hall, a North Texas Republican, had big support among Democrats too.
“What it means is we’ll now have two weekends of early voting instead of just the one,” said State Rep. John Bucy, a Williamson County Democrat.
Bucy said he’s always wary of changes to election laws, but in this case, voters are getting two full weekends of early voting.
It’s one of the few bipartisan election bills in recent years at the Capitol, where there’s been fierce battles over Republicans’ efforts to change voter registration rules, limit voting hours and change vote-by-mail rules all in the name of rooting out fraud.
If Abbott signs the bill into law, the change won’t go into effect until after the 2026 elections to give counties time to adjust to the new scheduling. They are expected to be in place for the next presidential election cycle in 2028.
The bill also changes how the state reports election results. No longer will state election officials report early vote results shortly after polls close on election night. Instead, those results will be included later when voting results from Election Day are also ready to be released.
The bill in question is SB2753, and the key passage is this:
SECTION 15. Sections 85.001(a) and (e), Election Code, are amended to read as follows:
(a) The period for early voting by personal appearance begins on the 12th [17th] day before election day, [and] continues through the [fourth] day before election day, and includes Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, except as otherwise provided by this section.
So if I’m interpreting this correctly, instead of early voting in person beginning three Mondays before Election Day (this is assuming a Tuesday election) and running through the Friday before, it will begin two Thursdays before and run through the Monday immediately before. If this were in effect this year, instead of early voting starting on Monday, October 20 and running through Friday, October 31, it would begin on Thursday, October 23 and run through Monday, November 3, with Election Day being on Tuesday, November 4. Still twelve days of early voting in person, just shifted forward by three days.
I think I like it. I agree with Rep. Bucy, it’s nice to have that second weekend included. There’s more to the bill than just this, and I’ll leave that to others to explore at this time. Senator Hall is, to put it mildly, not someone to trust in electoral matters, so I remain at least a little wary. But again, if my interpretation is correct, this sounds fine to me. Am I missing something? What do you think? Reform Austin has more.