More than 689k Texans have already voted in midterm election

In the first day of early voting, 474,938 Texans cast in-person ballots and 214,675 cast mail-in ballots in the 30 counties where most registered voters in the state — 78 percent — live. That turnout equals 34.3 percent of the total votes cast in those counties during the entire two-week early voting period in the last midterm election in 2014. So far this year, 5.6 percent of the 12.3 million registered voters in those 30 counties have voted. www.texastribune.org