Half of Harris County voters who turned out Nov. 5 cast ballots outside of their home polling places, taking advantage of a new program that lets citizens vote at any Election Day polling place rather than only their assigned precincts.

The move to “voting centers” was a key plank in Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman’s campaign for the office last year, and this month’s election was the first time it was used on a wide scale.

Nearly 17 percent of the county’s 2.3 million registered voters cast ballots earlier this month, far more than the 4 percent turnout last May in a trial run of the voting-center approach, which Trautman’s office calls “Vote Your Way.”

Prior to last May, Harris County residents could cast ballots at any one of dozens of locations during early voting but were required to visit polls in their home precincts on Election Day.

Trautman said the benefits of the change are clear. In November 2018, she said, 2,500 voters showed up at polling places other than their assigned precincts on Election Day and had to cast provisional ballots that likely were not counted.

“This year there was no wrong location,” said Trautman, a Democrat. “One voter replied to us (on social media) and said, ‘I was just out jogging by West Gray and decided to go vote.’ It’s where your day takes you is where you can wind up voting. You see the signs out and you just go in and vote.”

Trautman did face criticism from Republicans for significant delays in reporting election results.

A Houston Chronicle analysis of voting data shows 52 percent of Election Day voters cast ballots at a location other than the polling place associated with their home precincts, setting aside votes from the 265 precincts that had no home polling site cuts that figure to 46 percent.

Among the 747 polling places on Nov. 5 were roughly 50 early-voting locations that Trautman left open on Election Day, assuming voters would prefer familiar sites.

That hunch was right: Of the busiest 35 polling places on Election Day, 28 were early-voting locations. The busiest polling place — the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Montrose, which recorded 1,625 votes on Election Day — typically is the busiest location during early voting.

The trend did produce some counterintuitive results: Though voters could cast ballots anywhere, citizens’ preferences for familiarity left some needlessly waiting in line.

Of the 1,800 votes cast after the polls closed at 7 p.m. — the ballots count as long as voters stay in line — 63 percent were cast at early-voting sites, led by West Gray, Trini Mendenhall Community Center in Spring Branch, and Sunnyside Multi-Service Center.

That dynamic is familiar to Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham, whose county implemented voting centers four years ago. Fort Bend’s busiest early-voting location, Cinco Road Library, recorded 2,300 votes on Election Day, Oldham noted, while sites 1.5 miles away tallied just 250 ballots.

“If you’re a voter who voted at the Knights of Columbus last year early, you don’t remember you voted early, you just remember you went to the Knights of Columbus,” Oldham said. “It becomes challenging how to get those voters to go someplace where they don’t have to stand in line.”

Happy voters

Rice University political scientist Bob Stein, who is researching the effect of voting centers for the county, said exit polls conducted by his students show a huge majority of Election Day voters were happy with their choice of polling place, including those who voted at busy sites.

“Even in places where we know the lines were long, like West Gray, they didn’t seem to be bothered by it,” Stein said. “If someone gets to choose when and where they vote, the research shows they’re quite willing to trade off time. They budget it.”

More than 50 Texas counties, including Fort Bend, Brazoria and Wharton, have added voting centers since Lubbock County launched its program in 2006. Travis County, which includes Austin, was the largest to expand beyond precinct-based balloting before Harris.

The program was among Trautman’s top priorities upon taking office at the start of this year, though the change was possible because the incumbent she defeated in November 2018, Republican Stan Stanart, had invested in electronic poll books.

Proponents point to research suggesting voting centers could boost participation among infrequent voters, and say the system could cut election costs as little-used polling places are consolidated into larger voting centers. Trautman has said some quiet sites could be folded into busier ones after her office gathers data from several more elections.

Oldham, the Fort Bend elections official, said the shift to voting centers has allowed the county to staff roughly 20 percent fewer polling places than it would need under precinct-based voting.

Holmquist Elementary at the eastern edge of Barker Reservoir was not Harris County’s slowest location on Nov. 5, but the school was empty when the polls opened, so election judge Pat Durio became the first person to cast his ballot on Election Day, voting records show.

“It was so nice not to have to send anybody away because they were in the wrong precinct,” the 72-year-old Bellaire resident said. “I always felt so bad whenever someone would come in, especially later in the evening, 6:30 p.m. or so, and then they realized they’d have to go to their precinct across town and, basically, it meant they couldn’t vote because they couldn’t get there in time.”

Wrong ballots

Election Day was not without hiccups. At least a handful of voters casting ballots outside their home polling places reported seeing the wrong Houston city council district on their voting screens.

The clerk’s office also was extremely slow to tally the votes, not posting full election returns until Wednesday morning. Trautman blamed the delay on an October missive from the Texas secretary of state that directed her office not to transfer the tallies downtown from 10 outlying sites electronically, as she had planned.

Harris County Republican Party Chairman Paul Simpson highlighted those problems and a list of alleged paperwork, process or technical missteps the party cited as justifications for a “no confidence” resolution that its members passed Nov. 11 targeting Trautman’s office. Simpson said her “countywide polling scheme was not ready for prime time and ultimately failed.”

“Trautman's rush to implement countywide polling without proper preparation inevitably led to a litany of Election Day problems, delays, and failures, many of which are still being reported,” Simpson said. “All voters should remain vigilant to ensure the County Clerk’s plan complies with the law and is in the best interest of the voting public, not her own agenda."

Harris County elections administrator Michael Winn, who helped roll out Travis County’s shift to voting centers in 2011, called reports of incorrect ballots “very isolated,” and blamed it on human error by poll workers, which he said would result in additional training.

Oldham said such examples are embarrassing but unavoidable, and added that the issue is not inherently linked to Election Day voting centers, as the same error can occur during early voting.

“You’re dealing with people who work one or two elections a year, and many of whom are in their 70s, 80s, pushing 90 — they make mistakes,” Oldham said. “Back in the day with paper ballots or punch cards they’d do the same thing, they’d hand out the wrong ballot card and then the people vote in the wrong district.”

Trautman said her staff will weigh whether to adjust polling places in future elections. Regardless, she said she expects growing numbers of voters to take advantage of the flexibility of voting centers.

“In other counties we’ve heard that when they first started it was pretty good and with each successive election it got higher and higher,” she said. “About 35 percent of voters traveled to a location other than their home precinct location in May, and that jumped up to half this November,” she said. “We’d expect to see those numbers continue to climb.”

mike.morris@chron.com