Hi, y’all!

Last week, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced the state hit a record high of more than 19 million registered voters ahead of the consequential Nov. 3 midterm elections.

That’s nearly an 8% increase over the number of voters who registered to vote ahead of the last midterms in 2022.

And as early voting gets underway this week, Texans are breaking early voting turnout records in some of the state’s largest counties. We love to see it!

So far, and with one more week left to vote early, more than 200,000 people have voted early in Dallas County and in Harris County, home to Houston. In both Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, and Travis County, home to Austin, more than 100,000 voters have cast ballots early.

Aside from temporary closures of polling sites, paper jams, and long wait times in some counties, voting has gone pretty smoothly this week. And that’s a triumph, given that election officials faced some burdensome hurdles only weeks before early voting began. State errors led to two separate backlogs of thousands of voter registration records that officials have had to scramble to get into the system ahead of the election. And as of today, some counties are still processing voter registration applications that were delivered in person or mailed in and postmarked by the Oct. 5 deadline.

Make a plan before you head to the polls! Check your voter registration status; you can do that online at VoteTexas.gov, but if you run into problems, reach out to your county voter registrar directly. You can find a list of those officials by county here.

If you’re at the polls and have issues, remember that you can always ask to cast a provisional ballot. We’ve put together an explainer on how that process works.

Have you voted yet? What was your experience like at the polls? Did you encounter any issues? Did it go smoothly? I want to hear about it all. You can write me at [email protected].

Here are some important election dates to keep handy:

Oct. 23: Mail-in ballot application deadline
Oct. 30: Early voting ends
Nov. 3: Election Day

If you want to know what’s on your ballot, check out this ballot finder tool by our partner, the Texas Tribune.

And if you know anyone who might dig this kind of reporting, encourage them to sign up for the newsletter! They can do that here.

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How to prepare for the midterms

Elections in the United States don’t only happen on Election Day. They happen in the weeks ahead as election officials process voter registrations, mail absentee ballots and administer early voting.

So, how is mail voting going across the country? Or early voting at the polls? And what should Americans know about potential federal interference ahead of Election Day? Check in with election experts at Votebeat’s virtual event on Oct. 27 at 12 p.m. ET.

Attend for free!