36 early voting locations across the county<\/a>. Election workers spent Monday and much of the past few weeks setting up equipment and preparing rooms for voters.<\/p>\nKaleb Breaux, the county\u2019s elections administrator, said the change to hand-marked paper ballots is one of the biggest differences voters will notice this primary. And while hand-marked ballots is the primary way to vote in Collin County, there will still be ballot marking devices on hand for those who request it. Kaleb tells WFAA the county still utilizes polling tabulators to count ballots.<\/p>\n
\u201cVoting itself can be very intimidating. Some people just wanna come in and out and vote privately,\u201d Breaux said.<\/p>\n
Another change: voters will no longer have to verbally state which party\u2019s primary they wish to participate in.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow they’re able to make that selection on an actual tablet screen,\u201d Breaux said.<\/p>\n
Breaux said there will be 86 Election Day locations \u2014 eleven fewer than the number prescribed by the state. He is legally allowed to combine precincts to meet requirements, but acknowledged challenges in fast-growing areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re just finding it difficult to find more polling locations in those areas,\u201d he said, referring to growth in the northern and eastern parts of the county.<\/p>\n
Breaux added that some locations have grown weary of the political climate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the burden of dealing with some of those challenges sometimes makes it harder to being willing to be used as a polling location,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
President Trump has pushed for enhanced voter ID laws across the country. Breaux tells WFAA that an ID is required to vote in Texas. The President has also floated the idea of ending all mail-in ballots. Collin County has not made any decisions as it relates to mail-in ballots.<\/p>\n
In Collin County, about one in five registered voters participates in the primary \u2014 a rate that outpaces most other counties in Texas. Breaux credited his staff for keeping operations running smoothly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey come from all areas, all communities within this county…who take their job very seriously and take pride in what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0On the ballot are several consequential statewide races. You can read them all in our voter guide here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early voting in Collin County introduces hand-marked paper ballots and party selection on tablets, amid challenges in finding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-167342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}