EL PASO, Texas \u2014 An estimated 22,000 new El Paso voters have registered since the primary runoff. The surge is attributed to interest in federal, state and local races as residents prepare for next month\u2019s midterm election.<\/p>\n
With over half a million registered voters, El Paso County aims for a 40% turnout rate for this election.<\/p>\n
With El Paso County being relatively a Democratic leaning county, it is one of the largest counties in Texas and could play a pivotal role in the\u00a0midterm election outcomes.<\/p>\n
\u201cElections are important,\u201d said Melissa Martin, elections information and resources coordinator for the El Paso County Elections Department. \u201cDoesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s federal state but remember to vote in your local elections. Those are where we want your voices heard, especially here in the county of El Paso.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Texans begin to head to the polls today, El Paso County election officials are hoping for a big turnout for the midterm election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have only local elections,\u201d said Martin. \u201cWe also have federal and state, which some of the important races that we\u2019re seeing on the ballot, and you know, it\u2019s a common question that we\u2019re getting throughout Texas: is the senator race and the governor race.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Paso resident Michael Ramirez is one of the newly registered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not always this involved, but as I have said to a lot of my friends over the past few months, when the problems are becoming so bad that people like myself, who have never been involved before, find a need to do so, that should say something,\u201d said Ramirez.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elections offices across the state were suddenly under pressure to process voting applications because a backlog tied to the Texas Department of Public Safety led to a delay.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rockwall County, about 25 miles northeast of downtown Dallas, received about 3,500 delayed applications.<\/p>\n
Harris County, which includes Houston, received 75,000 while El Paso received 12,000, but officials here say their backlog was cleared by Oct. 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n
El Paso Mayor Renard U. Johnson says now it\u2019s on the voters to take it from here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that the voters come out, cast their ballots, and make sure that El Paso is on the map, and also that we\u2019re heard in Austin, Texas,\u201d said Johnson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Early voting across Texas is from Oct. 19-30. Election Day is Nov. 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas \u2014 An estimated 22,000 new El Paso voters have registered since the primary runoff. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1657,1658,132,1570,102,138,140,139,56,223,287,82,151397,1569,835],"class_list":["post-471709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-austin","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-houston","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-solomon-ladvienka","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471709","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=471709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}