Within the next year, Texans will likely see changes to when they can vote early in elections, including expanded weekend voting hours. Election officials say they have concerns.
The big picture
Last year, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 2753, which shifts Texas’ early voting window closer to election day, cutting out a three-day gap between the two voting periods and adding more Saturday and Sunday voting. While the changes did not take effect immediately and were designed to help boost voter turnout, local election administrators said the law will also significantly raise costs for municipalities and delay the release of election results.
“This is an incredibly complex transformation of the way we do elections in our state,” Rep. Matt Shaheen, R-Plano, said during an Aug. 4 hearing of the House Elections Committee, which he chairs.
Currently, early voting typically begins 17 days before election day and runs for 12 days, ending four days before election day, per the secretary of state’s office. This includes one weekend of early voting and gives election workers a few days to prepare for election day.
Under SB 2753, early voting would begin 12 days before election day, running for two weekends and straight through election day. Counties would also have to keep the polls open for 12 hours during the last few days of early voting, and nine hours on the second Sunday.
Election officials said the current three-day break allows staff to set up polling places for election day and prepare submitted ballots so results from early and mail-in voting can be released quickly after the polls close at 7 p.m. on election night.
“The concept of some results coming out at 7:01 [p.m.], I think that's gone, because your mail-in ballots won't even be complete by then,” Shaheen said.
Election workers also take time to rest during those three days, and requiring them to work straight through election day may make it harder to recruit staff, officials said Aug. 4.
“Although the total number of voting days is similar, staffing 13 consecutive days is very different from normal business hours with limited weekend hours,” said Laura Rogers, the Sherman County clerk and legislative chair for the County & District Clerks Association of Texas.
Zooming in
Continuous elections operations will require counties to hire more staff who will be expected to work longer hours, election officials told state lawmakers.
Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth estimated that the shift would raise the cost of administering a large election, like the general election in November, by 30%. The cost of running a smaller local election would go up by about 9%, she said, due to increased staffing needs, voting equipment requirements and plans to run a voter education campaign about the changes.
SB 2753 does not include state funding to cover these costs.
“In Harris County, since October of 2025, we have conducted eight consecutive elections, including three simultaneous elections in the month of May,” Hudspeth said Aug. 4. “Our operations expand from approximately 60-80 early voting locations to 600-700 election day vote centers. ... Supporting that level of continuous operations requires substantially more personnel and resources.”
Under the law, the secretary of state’s office is required to adopt rules governing the shift in early voting and issue a report stating the agency is “confident that the counties in this state are prepared.” Christina Adkins, director of elections for the secretary of state, said it “would be good for the legislature to consider” some changes to the legislation before the new early voting period takes effect.
She said all county officials on a committee analyzing the changes asked that the bill not be implemented until 2027, starting with the biennial constitutional amendment election in November of that year.
“[This would give us] time to work through some of these issues, do more training with our counties and perhaps visit with the legislature about some potential changes that would make implementation much, much easier and go much more smoothly—not just for our counties, but for our voters as well,” Adkins said during the Aug. 4 hearing.
Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, lauded the legislature’s work on SB 2753, acknowledging that lawmakers should work with election officials to “make sure we get this right.”
In the eight years that I've been on this committee, this is one of the most significant shifts to increase voter access in the state of Texas,” Bucy said. “We're talking about continuous voting. We're talking about two weekends of access without losing days. This is a way that's going to help working Texans have more access to the ballot box.”
The Texas Legislature is currently holding interim, information-gathering hearings to help shape its priorities for the next regular legislative session, which begins in January. Holding off on the law’s implementation would allow legislators to make adjustments next year, if needed.
Something to note
Voter education will be crucial before the changes take effect, officials said. They noted that Texans are used to seeing election results from early and mail-in voting start dropping shortly after the polls close at 7 p.m.—but due to the shift to continuous voting, election workers would not be able to prep those ballots for tabulation ahead of time.
“All election results will be reported together, meaning results will likely come out several hours later than what voters and candidates are currently used to,” said Jennifer Doinoff, the Hays County elections administrator and chair of the Texas Association of County Election Officials. “Elections will remain accurate, but the public must be aware of these changes because this is exactly how misinformation gets started.”
