2026 Election: Voter turnout in Gillespie County

We still have until 7 p.m. tonight to vote in Gillespie County. Fox 7 Austin's Kerry Burgess has been in the Hill Country all day and is giving us more information on how voter turnout has been today and, of course, during the early voting period last week. Kerry. Kerry. Well, Alec, out here in Gillespie County, we're at the Gillespie County Courthouse right now, which is right in downtown Fredericksburg, and folks are still at the polls a few locations. Thank you very much. Turnout was pretty, well, called light to moderate today at most of the spots I went to, and a good steady flow of people coming, but it was early voting that really made the difference here as a lot of folks went out and did their voting before today, and I had a chance to talk With Lindsey Brown, she is the Gillespie County Clerk here in Fredericksburg. And she told us how this has gone so far today. So early voting, we had a really good turnout. We had 10,230, 33 voters come in, which was really good. We were very pleased with that. And today, so far, as of around 2 o'clock, we had like 2,200 plus voters. So right now, we feel like the turnout's been really good. We're excited. And when you compare that to the fact that Gillespie County has about 28,000 or so residents, that's a pretty good percentage of the population. She said it was about 58.6% of the population that had already voted. So we've had pretty good turnout today at all the locations. They have 13 total precincts here in Gillespie County. And as you mentioned before, we have, what, about 15 minutes, a little over 15 minutes left before the polls close. They can't turn you away until 7 p.m. You have to be in line by 7pm in order to register your vote, just like it is for everybody else. And out here in Gillespie County, I did my voting this morning, got that done, got my little patch right here to show that. It's a little different out here. I will tell you my own perspective on that because I filled it in. It's a little, you do it like with a pen and you fill in a box. Just like you would take these old Scantron tests back in college days for me. That's what it felt like. And you select all your candidates that way. And it was a back and forth, a little ballot there, about a two pager. So that's how it went. It was very smooth. I got the voting done in 10 minutes or less today. And for most folks out here in Gillespie County, it was a pretty easy process for them as well. So out here in Gillespie County in Fredericksburg, I'm Kerry Burgess, Fox 7 Austin.