More than 22,000 El Pasoans cast ballots on the first day of early voting for the 2026 election Monday, 90% more than at the same point in the last midterm election in 2022.
Turnout on the first day of early voting was the second highest on record for an El Paso midterm election surpassed only by 2018, when El Pasoan Beto O’Rourke was the Democratic nominee for Senate against Republican Ted Cruz. O’Rourke lost the election by 2.6 percentage points, the best performance by a Democrat in a statewide election since 1994.
One of the early voting sites, at the Enrique Moreno El Paso County Courthouse, was closed most of the day after the building was evacuated because of smoke on higher floors. That voting site was responsible for 264 ballots on the first day of early voting in 2022 and 998 in 2018. The courthouse voting site will reopen at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
El Paso’s busiest early voting site historically is Bassett Place in Central El Paso. Throughout the lunch hour Monday, voters stood in a line more than 100 deep for 30 minutes or more to cast their ballots…