Collin County's paper-ballot voting setup made it through the first five days of early balloting ahead of the Nov. 3 election with one notable hiccup, and county figures show voters turning out in large numbers.
The county's check-in report for Monday, Oct. 19, through Friday, Oct. 23, counts 164,034 voters across its 42 early voting sites. Friday was the heaviest day of the week, with 34,724 check-ins, just ahead of Monday's 34,522. The daily reports show 33,984 on Tuesday, 31,248 on Wednesday and 29,553 on Thursday.
County election officials told CBS News Texas on Friday that the hand-marked ballot system was working well and that turnout was running above a typical midterm.
What changed at the polls
Since November 2025, in-person voters in Collin County have filled in their choices by hand on a ballot printed at the polling place, rather than having a machine record them. The ballots are still fed into the same DS200 scanners for counting, and accessible ballot-marking devices remain available for voters with disabilities.
Commissioners Court unanimously approved about $2.3 million in June 2025 for booths, printers, laptops and related supplies to make the switch.
The printer problem
The week's main glitch came on opening day. Printers that produce the ballots failed at about 10 sites Monday morning. Elections Administrator Kaleb Breaux told FOX 4 that the outages did not significantly disrupt voting. "Everything's up and running and operational within an hour and a half," he said that evening.
Breaux also said the county's voter rolls have grown by close to 100,000 since 2022, when turnout reached 53%, and that this election could draw 60% to 70%.
