Despite a seemingly never-ending downpour, both McLean 6th Grade School and St. Stephen Presbyterian Church had constant flows voters doing their civic duty.

Both polling places had about 450 voters come in and fill out their ballots before 3:30 p.m. 

“It’s a heavy voter turnout for a non-presidential year,” said Kent Hagood, election judge at McLean. “Because the turnout has been so favorable, it’s hard to say that the rain has chased anyone away.” 

The weather didn’t keep Fort Worth District 9 Councilmember Joel Burns from voting and bringing cookies to 24 different polling places across the city. 

“I think it’s important that people get out and vote mores than in just presidential years, but in all the elections that we have,” Burns said. “We have a $25 billion budget deficit that our state is looking at and as that gets pushed out to cities, I’m certainly worried about that, and it influenced who I voted for for governor.” 

Burns said voting in the midterm elections is just as important as voting for the president. 

“We’re electing our governor and the lieutenant governor, all the people that run our state,” Burns said. “They are just as important as those that operate federally and you have all the congressional elections going on right now too.” 

Not only were the hundreds of voters deciding on whom to vote for, but they also had to choose to vote by paper or electronically because both locations had one e-voting station. 

“It depends on the line, but some people will be disappointed that they can’t e-vote,” said Barbara Durnan, poll clerk at St. Stephen. “We more than likely won’t use hundreds of these and if you multiply that across all the districts you can see how expensive that is.” 

TCU sophomore Taylor Jackson, from the Woodlands, is a first-time voter and used the electronic machine at St. Stephen. She didn’t even think to use the paper ballots because the machine was easy to use. 

“I’m actually really excited because I haven’t voted in any of the elections before,” Jackson said. “So my dad has been hounding me to get registered and make sure to vote.”

Jackson’s sorority helped her get registered to vote in Fort Worth. 

“One of the girls in my sorority is a representative for [the TCU Student Government Association] and wanted to get everyone registered in Tarrant County so they could vote here,” Jackson said. “That’s how me and my roommate got registered and we came out and voted.” 

Despite the ease of the electronic voting, Hagood thinks paper ballots are here to stay. 

“It’s been interesting to see some people that are more advanced in years that you wouldn’t think are that tech-savvy are trying the electronic booth,” Hagood said. “But clearly the preference of the people in this district is to use the paper ballots, for now that does a good job for the county.”

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