Mail Ballots in Bexar County: In by 7 P.M. Tuesday, or Postmarked by 7 P.M. and Received by 5 P.M. Wednesday
A Bexar County mail ballot counts if the elections office receives it by 7 p.m. on Election Day — or, if it carries a 7 p.m. Election Day postmark, by 5 p.m. the next business day; ballots from outside the United States get five days.
For Bexar County's mail voters, the election now runs on two clocks, and both are short. Domestic mail ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3 — or by 5 p.m. on the next business day when the ballot was postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day — according to the Bexar County Elections Department's mail-ballot guidance, read this cycle. A ballot mailed from outside the United States must be delivered to the Elections Department no later than five days after Election Day.
The county's own caution is about the postmark itself. The Elections Department advises voters to pay attention to changes in how the U.S. Postal Service applies postmarks to deadline-sensitive mail, the guidance said — because a ballot near the deadline must satisfy both the postmark and the receipt requirement, mailing at the last moment carries a different risk than simply completing the ballot by Election Day. A ballot dropped in a box late Tuesday without a Tuesday postmark does not meet the second clock, however early it was filled out.
A rejected ballot is not always a dead one. If a mail ballot is rejected for a missing or mismatched ID number or signature, the county must notify the voter within two business days of finding the problem, and corrections must be completed by the sixth day after Election Day — Monday, November 9, 2026 — according to PlanYourVoteSA's mail-voting guide, read this cycle, which also points voters to the county's ballot tracker to confirm receipt. With early voting closed and no in-person voting until Tuesday, mail voters holding a ballot this weekend hold the only votes still moving in Bexar County.
