This will be updated throughout the day with more dispatches from Dallas Morning News reporters who are visiting polling sites. After polls close, The Dallas Morning News will have live election results for local, state and national races.
Election Day has arrived in Dallas, and hundreds of thousands of North Texas voters will hit the polls to help decide national, statewide and local races.
Many different issues are expected to drive the choices of local voters, including first-time voters. One of those major issues is abortion, which had been a major point of emphasis from politicians leading up to Election Day.
Here’s what local voters had to say about how abortion influenced their decisions:
Madelyne Besendorfer of Arlington:
“Treating women of childbearing age is terrifying at this point.”
Fox Narayan of Carrollton:
“It’s just the ability for a woman to make the decisions about her own body. There’s some very, just, I think, extreme policies being put into place to kind of prohibit that. .. I would hope that if we were trying to expand our family, that my wife would not be in any danger because of complications and things like that.”
Carlyn Bailey Mason of Dallas:
“We have had less rights than we have ever had before. [Trump] is trying to take people back by decades. I think it’s going to be scary, divisive and I’m just battening down the hatches.”
John McHenry of Dallas:
“The fact that someone could be in charge of my daughter’s or my wife’s safety, other than themselves … No one tells a man what they can or can’t do. So why should we tell a woman what she can or can’t do with her body?”
Missy Guay of Denton:
“I’m not saying that I’m for or against abortion. I just think that it should be a woman’s right to decide what happens with her body.”
Omar Vazquez of Denton:
“It’s just absurd to me that a bunch of dudes in robes are that worried about reproductive rights.”
Marcus Melton of Frisco:
“I have a daughter, and I value my nieces and all the women in my family. They have rights that need to be protected, so that’s why I’m out voting.”
Abby Schooler of Frisco:
“I’m focusing on protecting what I can as a woman, especially in Texas.”
Itzayana Castañeda of Oak Cliff:
“I am Catholic, and I believe that our rights need to be heard as well. We need to keep our state red and the Democrats out.”
Roksanda Johnson of Princeton:
“I personally believe as far as abortion, it’s nobody’s business other than the woman and her doctor, nobody. It’s a personal medical issue.”
Sylvia Coulson of Red Oak:
“I believe that babies deserve to live. That’s where I come from.”
Ana Robeldo of Rockwall:
“Women are dying because they can’t get access to abortion care. I needed to have an abortion to save my life.”
Sue Ambrose, Emily Brindley, Lauren Caruba, Miriam Fauzia, Amber Gaudet, Kevin Krause, Arcelia Martin and Brian Womack contributed to this
