Here's what we're seeing at polls across Texas on Election Day

Harris County voting extended to 8 p.m. after voting machine glitches in Houston

Twenty-one of 44 voting machines are down at NRG Arena in Houston and polling staff is working to get machines back online, TV station KHOU reported just before 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Both the Harris County GOP and Harris County Democrats tweeted shortly after 6 p.m. that a judge granted the county an extra hour of voting. Harris County polling locations will be open until 8 p.m.

With 2.5 million registered voters, the county has the greatest number of voters in the state.

Complete vote-counting for the county could be delayed until past midnight because there are so many voting locations and some experienced Election Day glitches, Houston news outlets are reporting.

At one polling site only 10 of 50 voting booths were operational at some point Tuesday, according to TV station KPRC. And the Houston Chronicle, quoting Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum, reported that it takes about a minute for voting-counting equipment to read each digital drive storing the results from each of the county's 782 polling locations.

Tatum also said there were some locations where machines were not set up properly and some polling places might have to extend hours because of that morning delay.

"That sort of tells you how long it's going to take to process all of the results that come in from Election Night," Tatum told the newspaper.

-Nusaiba Mizan and John C. Moritz

Travis County Election Day voter turnout well ahead of 2020

More than 111,000 Travis County voters had cast Election Day ballots as of 5:30 p.m., the Travis County Election Board said on Twitter.

The announcement comes with 1 ½ hours until the polls close and shows the vote count well outpaces the mark of 50,521 ballots cast in Travis County on Election Day during the 2020 general election. Voter turnout so far also beats the turnout of 2018, when 110,282 ballots were cast on Election Day.

Those totals are only for ballots cast on Election Day, and do not include early voting. In 2018, 45% of Travis County's 486,562 total ballots were cast during early voting, and in 2020 more than 90% of the county's 602,889 total ballots were cast during early voting, according to the Texas Secretary of State's office.

Lines and wait times at voting centers across Austin and Travis County have been fairly minimal on Tuesday, with the exception of roughly 20 locations out of167 experiencing wait times of more than 50 minutes at any given time.

As of 5 p.m., 26 voting centers were experiencing lengthy wait times, according to the Election Board's wait tracker.

Polls will be closing at 7 p.m. Anyone in line to vote at 7 p.m. will be able to vote and should remain in line, the Travis County Election Board said.

-Hogan Gore

Hourlong wait times persist at a few polling locations in the Austin area, university campus polling locations see long wait times

As of about 4:30 p.m., there were wait times of more than 50 minutes at 18 Travis County polling locations. The vast majority have wait times of under 20 minutes, or no wait time at all.

Locations with long wait times include college campuses at the University of Texas Flawn Academic Center, St Edward's University, and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

As of about 4:30 p.m., five Williamson County locations have wait times of more than 46 minutes. Most polling locations have wait times of zero to 15 minutes.

Two locations near U.S. Route 290 and three locations in San Marcos have wait times of more than 20 minutes in Hays County, including the student center at Texas State University.

The American-Statesman reported in October student voting organizers statewide have been advocating for additional polling locations and polling hours on their college campuses to increase youth voter access and ease Election Day wait times.

-Nusaiba Mizan

Bell County extends voting hours to 8 p.m.

Bell County was allowed by court order to extend voting hours countywide until 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The county sought to extend voting for all 42 polling locations after a delay with check-in machines to scan voter IDs at eight locations, said county public information officer James Stafford. All locations were operational by 9 a.m.

Bell County voting results will be delayed Tuesday night, according to a news release.

-Nusaiba Mizan

Bell County seeks court order to extend voting hours after brief delay with check-in machines

Bell County seeks a court order to extend voting hours for all 42 of its voting locations after a brief delay with check-in machines at eight out of 42 voting locations, county public information officer James Stafford told the American-Statesman shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday.

A Twitter user on Tuesday morning tweeted a photo of a line at a Temple voting location, saying: "I am in Bell county Texas, the voting machines are down in Temple. No one has been able to vote at all today, people calling around report very few polling places working in the entire county."

The tweet omits critical details and inaccurately says few polling places were open at that time in Bell County.

Check-in machines at eight locations, used to scan voters' ID, was down this morning, Stafford said. The issue was due to the machine failing to automatically update after the daylight saving time change early Sunday morning.

"When our central computer sees that discrepancy, it will not let that machine come online for security reasons," Stafford said.

All eight locations were open and running by 9 a.m.

Bell County has countywide polling, so voters can vote at any county location regardless of precinct. As of shortly before 1 p.m., Stafford said over 12,000 people voted in the county.

"I want to be really clear that this issue did not have anything to do with ballots or the ballot tabulation. It was limited to those check-in devices," Stafford said.

Stafford said they have contacted the secretary of state to request the county be allowed to keep their polls open an additional hour. Based on the secretary's office guidance, they are trying to pursue that option through a court order to keep all 42 polling locations open until 8 p.m. to compensate for that issue, Stafford said.

-Nusaiba Mizan

What does it mean if your voter registration is ‘in suspense’?

Texas voters are frequently asking nonpartisan volunteers at the Election Protection Hotline (866-Our-Vote) what it means to have your voter registration “in suspense," Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Emily Eby told the American-Statesman Tuesday.

The hotline is jointly run by a coalition of organizations including the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Eby, senior election attorney and policy counsel, wrote: “We have gotten a lot of reports of voters whose registration is listed as ‘in suspense,’ and we want them to know they are still eligible to vote! They’ll just need to update their address at the check-in table.”

According to the secretary of state’s website, the suspense list in Texas is a list of voters who failed to respond to a confirmation notice, whose renewal certificate was returned to the voter registrar as undeliverable, or who was excused or disqualified from jury service because they were not a resident of that county.

A voter on the suspense list is still registered to vote, according to the secretary of state's website. If that voter still lives in the same residence and shows up at the same precinct location, the voter can show proof of identification and fill out a Statement of Residence to vote and be removed from the suspense list.

If the voter moved to a different address but within the same county, the voter can fill out a Statement of Residence and vote, as long as the voter is still living within the same political subdivision covered by the election, according to the secretary of state’s website.

If the voter moved outside the county, the voter may vote provisionally, according to the secretary of state’s website.

The secretary of state's website lists 1,824,802 suspense voters as of November 2022. There are more than 15 million nonsuspense voters, for a total of over 17 million registered voters in Texas.

-Nusaiba Mizan

Nearly hourlong wait times at several Travis County polling locations

Travis County voters are heading to the polls Tuesday morning as several of the 167 polling locations are experiencing lines and wait times.

As of 10 a.m., voters planning to cast their ballots were experiencing wait times of over 51 minutes at 19 polling locations, including Austin City Hall, Bee Cave City Hall, and the University of Texas Flawn Academic Center, according to the Travis County Clerk's Election Division.

Numerous other polling locations, mostly in South Austin, are also showing wait times north of 50 minutes.

In Williamson County, three of 65 polling locations have had wait times of 45 minutes or more Tuesday morning, according to the Williamson County Elections Office. Meanwhile, Hays County voters have seen wait times of 20 minutes at eight of 51 precincts, with a 10-20 minute wait at the LBJ student union at Texas State University, according to the Hays County elections dashboard.

Registered voters in Travis County are eligible to vote at any polling location in the county and are advised to look for “Vote Here/Aqui” signs, according to the Travis County Clerk’s Office.

-Hogan Gore

More:Live updates for the 2022 Texas midterm election

Texas election officials may finalize results after election night

Sen. Ted Cruz retweeted a video of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying, "In modern elections, more and more votes are being cast in early voting and also by mail. And many states don't start counting those ballots until...after the polls close on Nov. 8. So you heard the President say this the other night. He's been very clear on this as well: we may not know all the winners of elections for a few days. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. That's how this is supposed to work."

Cruz retweeted the video with the caption, "nope. it's not."

Cruz made a similar claim on Oct. 27 when he tweeted only Democratic cities take "'days' to count their votes" while "the rest of the country manages to get it done on election night." PolitiFact rated this Mostly False.

Using the November 2020 election counting rates of major urban counties nationwide, including in Texas, PolitiFact found some urban counties were ahead of the statewide counting rate while others lagged.

Additionally, states have different rules for when to start processing and counting ballots.

The nonpartisan voter advocacy organization Common Cause Texas emphasized "Election Night is not Results Night" in a Monday news release. Using information compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the news release highlighted Texas is one of 38 states that allows election workers to begin processing ballots before Election Day, but it is also one of 23 states that prohibits election workers from counting ballots before Election Day. Counting begins when polls open at 7 a.m.

Texas law requires precinct election records to be delivered no later than 24 hours after polls close in each election.

Usually larger counties report their votes by the following morning after Election Day, but most Texas counties report their unofficial returns by midnight, assistant secretary of state for communications Sam Taylor wrote in a Tuesday email.

-Nusaiba Mizan

More:Here are 4 key Texas races to watch on Election Day

Central Texas counties seeing lower mail ballot rejections compared to March primaries

Nearly 25,000 mail ballots were rejected statewide in the primary elections, largely due to a new requirement that voters include either the last four digits of their Social Security number or their Texas personal ID/driver's license number on the ballot carrier envelope. The identification number the voter includes must match the number in their voter registration record.

Election officials shared preliminary mail ballot rejection rates as of Monday. These rates may change as more mail ballots are returned and rejected mail ballots that need to be fixed are "cured."

• Travis County: 2.8% as of Monday. The final rejection rate for the March primary elections was 8.2%.

• Williamson County: 2.21% rejection rate as of Monday.

• Bastrop County: 35 defective mail ballots, and 27 have been corrected while eight are pending correction as of Monday.

• Hays County shared no preliminary numbers.

Officials emphasized voters can correct their ballots if they are notified their ballots were rejected due to a defect. Mail ballot voters have six days after the election to make corrections.

-Nusaiba Mizan

More:Tuesday is Election Day. Here's what you need to know for voting

Low early voting turnout ahead of Election Day in Texas

Early voting turnout for the 2022 general election was low compared to early voting in the 2018 general election. Turnout percentages below represent the proportion of people who voted among all registered voters.

• Travis County early voting turnout dropped from 47% in 2018 to 37% in 2022, according to the Secretary of State's unofficial figures.

• Williamson County early voting turnout was 49% in 2018 and 39% in 2022, according to the Secretary of State's website.

• Hays County early voting turnout was 47% in 2018 and 39% in 2022, according to the Secretary of State's website.

• Bastrop County had 18,607 in-person voters during early voting and 1,299 mail ballots accepted so far for the 2022 general election. In 2018, the total early voting turnout, including in-person and by mail, was 20,283 voters, Elections Administrator Kristin Miles said Monday.

-Nusaiba Mizan

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Election Day 2022: What we're seeing at polls across Texas