San Antonio's Hill Country Neighbors Voted Early in Force: Hays County Finishes at 87,945 Ballots, Comal County at 63,162

The early-vote wave that swept Bexar County ran straight up the I-35 corridor. Hays County — San Marcos, Kyle and Buda — finished early voting with 87,945 ballots, about 43 percent of its 203,490 registered voters, according to StatPlate's county-by-county tally through Friday, October 30, read in full this cycle. Comal County — New Braunfels, Bulverde, Garden Ridge and Canyon Lake — finished at 63,162 ballots, about 42 percent of its 151,987 registered voters, with the On Point Politics tracker breaking Comal's total into 60,312 cast in person and 2,850 returned by mail.

Both counties sit among the state's turnout leaders for places their size: on the SOS-roster-based tracker at early.professorbutts.com, Hays records about 43,218 early ballots per 100,000 registered voters — among the highest rates for Texas counties with at least 50,000 registered — at 1.29 times its 2022 pace, with Comal at about 41,548 per 100,000 and 1.14 times 2022. Comal's own first week had already told the story: 39,550 ballots through October 25, about 25.9 percent of the county's registered voters, a 2.6 percent increase over the first week of the 2022 midterms, in the League of Women Voters of the Comal Area's count reported by My Canyon Lake.

Statewide, the tallies read this cycle put Texas at 6,857,566 early ballots — 6,602,045 in person and 255,521 by mail — about 36 percent of the state's registered voters, the trackers report; the figures are unofficial tallies compiled from county and state reporting and may shift as counties finalize. For San Antonio, the corridor numbers matter practically as well as politically: Comal and Hays are the metro's northern growth edge, and their voters decide the same congressional and state races on many Bexar ballots. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, for everyone who has not yet voted. Austin bureau pickup credited.