BELL COUNTY, Texas — The push to get voters registered, informed and ready to vote is in full swing as the November General Election nears.
The potential turnout for the election is growing based off an increase in registered voters.
"Right now we have just under 240,000 people registered to vote in Bell County which is great," said James Stafford, the county spokesperson. "It's about 25,000 more than we had in the last presidential election."
Stafford said more people have become certified to register others to vote in the State of Texas, too. Those people are called deputy registrars.
"There's a lot of efforts to increase the number of registered voters we have and to encourage people to make their voices heard," Stafford added.
Texas has deemed more than one million voters as ineligible, that includes people who moved out of state or are dead. Coryell County told 6 News they aren't aware if they were affected. Justin Carothers, the election administrator for Coryell County, said registration numbers are up and the county currently has 46,715 registered voters as of Sept. 25, 2024.
Stafford said he couldn't speak if Bell County had voters scrubbed. He highly recommends anyone with doubt or questions about their voter registration to validate it.
"If you're not sure if you're registered to vote or not, we encourage you to verify that but the process is really easy," Stafford said.
You can validate your voter registration through your county elections office or on the Secretary of State's website.
If you are needing to register to vote, you have until Oct. 7.
"When you are registering to vote, one of the things we do encourage people is you'll be given the option to use your social security number or your driver's license number and we tell people you may want to use both at that time because down the road, if you're registering to ballot by mail, you'll be asked to use the same number you used," Stafford said.
Stafford said to also not fret if your white voter registration card doesn't come in, or you've lost it.
"All you need to vote is your voter ID and there's a few kinds that they take," Stafford said. "If you wait around for that printed thing every year, if it doesn't come, that's all right -- you don't need that to vote."
Most importantly, get voter educated now. Most counties have sample ballots ready for you and you can even use them while you vote, to some degree.
"As a reminder, you can print that out with your vote filled in and take that into the polling place, that's totally allowed," Stafford explained. "You can't have it on your phone, but you can have a print of exactly how you want to cast your ballot."