DALLAS — Early voting begins Monday, Oct. 21. More Texans than ever are registered to vote this November.
Former Secretary of State John Scott says Texas voters should be confident in the upcoming election.
“I think, extremely confident. Yeah, I think that all the money and effort that goes into it as well as all the people involved in it, their one goal is to have safe, secure, and fair elections,” Scott told Inside Texas Politics.
He says he just hopes people take the time to go vote. With 18 million registered voters in Texas, he’s doubtful that that number will result in a higher turnout in this presidential election.
“The last presidential election, I think, was about two-thirds, a little over 66%. The one before that was down around 60%. So, I would be surprised if it surpassed the two-thirds. I don't know if the same level of excitement is there as it was then,” he said.
When Scott was secretary of state, he implemented several changes. One was how the secretary of state interacted with local elections administrators to make sure that administrators’ record-keeping was correct. This benefits voters, he said.
“So many times, the record-keeping, if no one's checking or no one's calling it out, they don't know that they definitely need to maintain those documents. I think now they do, and they treasure them, and I think that allows for an audit trail that should inspire confidence in the election,” said Scott.
He says he will be watching three races on election night. All are in the Valley - two U.S. Representative seats and a state Senate seat.
And he predicts we’ll know who won the Presidential race on election night. “The polling on the exit polling is sophisticated enough to where we will have a high degree of certainty who the winner was.”
Scott responded to an investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and Votebeat that said Texas officials incorrectly labeled some U.S. citizens as noncitizens or even removed them because they didn’t respond to letters about their citizenship.
If there’s a better way to identify non-citizens when they sign up to vote, then the state will work on it in the next legislative session, Scott said.