Collin County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet poses outside the polling location adjacent to his office in McKinney.

More than 36% of registered Collin County voters cast ballots in the first week of in-person early voting for the Tuesday, Nov. 5, general elections, said Bruce Sherbet, county elections administrator.

The turnout topped 261,000 voters, Sherbet said Monday, Oct. 28.

Early voting ends at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, and Sherbet said that when he would expect the longest lines –- even longer than election day – at polling places. There are 45 locations for early voting and 117 on election day, he said.

Sherbet said the COVID-19 pandemic changed voting patterns during the 2020 presidential election when there were 12 days of early voting, compared to 10 days this election.

“Overall, we had about 500,000 in the election, and 93% of our vote was early four years ago,” he said. “That’s just not going to be the case this time, because we don’t have that extended period of time … and we don’t have that heavy, heavy mail ballot thing.”

Collin County Elections sent out 45,000 mail ballots in 2020 and about 20,000 this year that are expected to account for about 5% of the total votes, he said.

“This is my gut and my experience, probably around 80% to 85% of our votes cast are going to be early instead of 93%, so that means more will vote on election day, Sherbet said. “We have more locations on election day than we did four years ago [when] we had 103.”

The administrator said, “We’ve beefed up our processes, our personnel, our locations, our equipment to try to accommodate a heavier turnout on election day.”

Sherbet has 18 full-time employees and brings in

about 25 temporary workers during elections to help with phone banks and voter registration that ended Oct. 7.

“We brought them in about two or three weeks before the cutoff, trained them up well so that we could have plenty of people to get those things entered as quickly as possible,” he said.

Another 25 ballot board auditors handle the mail ballot process and the daily report forms from each location.

“They literally audit every one,” Sherbet said. “When you vote, you have to sign the sticker, print your name on there. They audit to make sure the number of stickers match the number of names written on the poll list, which match the number of ballots that were processed through the ballot counter to full auditing process.”

He said the full ballot boxes are transported by a sheriff’s deputy and locked in a secure warehouse cage under video surveillance.

The counting of early ballots will begin Sunday, Nov. 3, and the early results will be released after polls close at 7 p.m. on election day, the administrator said.

Collin County has 748,729 registered voters, he said, a 39% increase over the past eight years.

“I think we’re going to end with about 78% turnout, maybe 80% and that’s in line with what we had four years ago, except four years ago, we had less registered voters,” Sherbet said. “So, in aggregate, I fully expect we’re going to vote more than we’ve ever voted in this county, just because we have more registered voters.”

Voters in line to vote when the polls close will be allowed to vote, he said. Depending on the size of the polling place, the remaining voters may be brought inside and the doors locked, or a poll worker may be stationed at the end of the line.

Once voting has been completed at a polling place, a results tape is printed and that and the ballots, the poll book and other paperwork is brought to the elections office in McKinney for tabulating.

“That takes a while to do, especially on a presidential election,” he said, so results released at 8:30 p.m. may include only two locations and busier locations may not be done until 9 p.m.

Sherbet said the biggest challenge as elections administrator is trying to address the misinformation and disinformation and trying to chase down problems that never really existed to begin with.”

One such issue is voting machines flipping or changing votes.

“Voting technology now is better than it’s ever been,” he said. “I’ve never seen one example of a machine flip.”

He advised voters to check their ballots: “Check your screen before you print your ballot, and once you print your ballot, look at your selections on there. Make sure you agree with them. If you have an option to change that once it’s printed, and you then call vote of the election judge and go, ‘Hey, I voted for so and so.’”

The election judge will void or “spoil” the original ballot and the voter can create a new ballot. 

Sherbet said voters are allowed three attempts, but “Here’s the point of no return — when you put it in that ballot counter (ballot box) and you go home.”

He said, “If you have any concerns or questions, just stop what you’re doing, ask a poll worker, an election judge or alternate judge, to assist you. We can resolve anything up to that point.”

There are a lot of safeguards to protect voters, he said. “Voters can go back and forth on the voting machine and make changes all the way through that ballot at any time. And if you print it wrong, or if it doesn’t have what you want, get another ballot.”

One way voters can make sure help themselves is to print a sample ballot online and mark it at home. Election law allows them to have information so long as they don’t share with other voters or display it to other voters.

However, the material must be tangible and not on a phone, Sherbet said.

An occasional problem is voters walking out of the polling place with their ballot.

“They printed it out, and they may think it’s a receipt showing their selections [but] it’s their official ballot,” Sherbet said.

Once a ballot leaves the polling place, the ballot becomes invalid. But if they return with it, the election judge can spoil the ballot and issue a provisional ballot that will be evaluated and tabulated separately from other ballots. “They protect voters that fell through the cracks,” he said.

Another issue is a voter who received a mail ballot and then decides to vote in person. If that voter brings the mail ballot to the polls and turns it in, they will be allowed to vote a regular ballot.

If they are unable to surrender the mail ballot, the voter will be allowed to fill out a provisional ballot.

Some voters are confused because they did not remember requesting a mail ballot, Sherbet said. However, voters eligible to vote by mail can request an annual mail ballot, meaning they will be sent a mail ballot for every election held that year.

On the subject of voter fraud committed by persons unregistered to vote, the administrator said, “There’s no way that that could actually happen, because there are so many steps just to get your ballot in your hand.”

If a non-citizen attempted to vote, they could go to prison, Sherbet said. “You can most definitely get deported for that, and if you’re going through a naturalization process and you did this, you’ll never become a naturalized citizen.”

Sherbet ended by saying he was retiring at the end of this year, having worked 11 presidential elections at the county level, first in Dallas County and then in Collin County.

“I think I earned a retirement,” he said. It’s been my legacy. It’s been my pride and joy … I made democracy happen at my county level; I facilitated something that’s precious in this country.”

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