On the first day of early voting, the line outside the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center snaked out the door.
“People are way more energized this time around in the last midterms,” said Melanie Young, president of the Sunnyside Super Neighborhood. “There are lines in places that I’ve never seen lines for voting. Normally, the line is for Election Day.”
According to the Harris County Clerk, Teneshia Hudspeth’s office, more than 104,000 people voted in person on Oct. 19, the first day of early voting. The numbers far outpaced the 2018 midterm opening when more than 63,000 voters showed up to the polls. In 2022, 61,000 voters turned up on the first day.
The clerk’s unofficial tally through Oct. 27, with three days of early voting left, shows nearly 782,000 early voters.
That is already more than the total number of early voters in 2022 and 74,000 short of the 2018 turnout. The final count was 1.2 million voters in 2018 and 1.1 million in 2022, according to the county’s official canvass reports.
What the numbers show
Early voting trends show Black neighborhoods are busy.
The Acres Homes MultiService Center logged 9,863 voters as of Oct. 28.
The Sunnyside Center had 9,859.
Rain Eatmon, executive director of the Acres Homes Community Advocacy Group, said the early-voting turnout usually topped out at 4,000. But this year, it is on track to reach 10,000 voters during the early voting period prior to the Oct. 30 cutoff.
Combined with the nearby Lone Star College Victory Center, the first week reached roughly 17,000 voters.
“We’re hearing people say that there’s a level of urgency I don’t think we’ve seen since 2018,” Eatmon said. “For communities like Acres Homes, the reality is that people are hurting at the gas pump, in paying for their groceries, but in the larger conversation, we as Black Houstonians have been paying attention since the primaries, and this is just the continuation of what we are trying to move forward for a better reality for Black Houstonians and Black people in general…there’s a more heightened awareness.”
Why they’re voting
Voters and GOTV (get out the vote) organizers cited different motives for their decisions to vote.
“It [voter turnout] was more robust and active than I’ve seen in a few election cycles…Texas has been red for the past 30 years, and it’s just time to change that.”
Vincent Sanders, Harris County precinct chair
The Black community was mobilized when U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, one of the state’s most prominent Black politicians, was running for the U.S. Senate seat in the primaries against James Talarico (who won against Crockett), Eatmon added. A Texas Southern University poll of 500 recent Black voters found only 7% said they were less likely to vote because of her defeat, even as 77% agreed the Democratic Party takes Black voters “for granted.”
“That conversation turbocharged once Talarico won because then there was a conversation about how can we hold Talarico accountable to show up for Black Houstonians and Black Harris County residents now that he is the candidate for Senate,” Eatmon said.
Rev. James Dixon, pastor of the Community of Faith Church and President of the NAACP Houston Chapter, pointed to a combination of policy fights.
“It is encouraging to see multiple generations participating in this election with enthusiasm,” Dixon said. “The electorate is more intelligent, more informed, understanding that when you add up Medicaid cuts to SNAP cuts to DEI being outlawed, to critical race theory being outlawed, to the defunding of public education and the hostile takeover of public school districts. People understand that all of those cumulative issues add up to the destruction of democracy and the undermining of freedom. We’re making decisions now that would affect the next 50 to 100 years.”
The cost of living came up repeatedly.
“I plan on voting because groceries are just too high,” Young said.
State Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons, who represents House District 146, cited “the extremism and the authoritarianism from the federal government,” along with affordability issues, as the reason for a large turnout. Simmons, who vocally opposed the Texas Education Agency takeover of Houston ISD before running for the seat, named public education as a key issue.
“We lost our democratic ability to make decisions about our children’s education, about the schools in our community, about essentially being taxed without representation because they didn’t wipe out property taxes for homeowners in HISD,” Simmons said. “They have to pay a property tax, but now you don’t even have the privilege and the right of an elected board trustee to emphasize the issues that matter to you.”
Rejecting the idea that Black voters are a bloc that automatically votes for Democrats, she attributed the enthusiasm to “a historical standpoint; there was a time when it was not legal for us to vote.”
“It’s not necessary that Black voters vote blue no matter who, but when we see who is working on our behalf, the policies that align and support and uplift our communities, and then being able to understand, again, what’s at stake, the turnout does not surprise me one bit,” she added.
Lucy Calhoun, an Acres Homes resident who has already voted, said she did not know Talarico at first.
But his repeated visits to Houston’s Black communities changed her mind.
“He kept saying, ‘I want to help the people,’” said Calhoun, who is 77. “In comparing him with Paxton, I’m saying to myself, ‘Are you listening?’”
The ground game
Grassroots organizers say the push went beyond the voters they knew would show up.
The Houston Black American Democrats, led by chair Shamier Bouie, has mailed more than 150,000 Black voters across Harris County, the group’s biggest mail effort in recent memory. Nearly half of them, Bouie said, were infrequent voters.
The group also expanded its poll-greeter program to about 20 locations and has canvassed on weekends.
“It’s a layer of all the tactics, but overall it’s more so just not doing the same old reaching just your core voters or trying to reach more people than just the ones we know were going to vote,” Bouie said. “People say they’re ready for a change. It’s the opportunity to see people on the ballot that they believe in and can actually help, from the top down, all the way down to the bottom.”
At the Texas Organizing Project, co-executive director Brianna Brown said her group is “seeing a surge of new midterm voters,” which she believes is critical to its strategy of expanding the electorate.
Brown added she made the conscious decision to focus outreach efforts on in-person conversations.
“When we’re also at the doors, or we’re also having a face-to-face conversation with a Black voter, we’re able to not just talk about a candidate,” Brown said. “We don’t start talking about candidates until like page two. Our goal is to have a really good organizing conversation with someone to understand what moves them and then connecting that to the ballot box.”
Black people showing up to the ballot is an expected response from the community, she explained.
“Black folks…we are doing what we do when it comes to when our democracy is threatened, how we show up and make sure that the thing that our ancestors fought for and died for is not in vain,” Brown said.
Eatmon added that canvassers also met first-time voters who track politics through TikTok influencers rather than traditional media, yet “speak to it with the same level of understanding” as those who follow the news.
