It may be awhile before there’s a final count of election day primary votes cast in Dallas County this week — or a decision on whether they’ll ever be counted.
How many Dallas County residents weren’t able to vote because of widespread confusion over polling locations? We may never know.
And the impact of Tuesday’s chaos on political races in Dallas County — as well as statewide and congressional races — may be debated for a very long time.
How did this happen?
Decisions made years ago may have led to Tuesday's chaos. But the immediate catalyst was the decision by a Dallas County judge to keep polls open until 9 p.m. — then the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to separate ballots cast after 7 p.m.
“I'll be honest, I don't know whether they're going to be included in the preliminary or final results,” said Dallas attorney Chris Patton, a former Dallas County election judge. “I know the process is they segregate them. And that's what the Texas Supreme Court said to do.”
Patton said the ballots may ultimately be counted or the Supreme Court may rule that “the extension is invalid and the segregated ballots would not be counted.”
The safest bet, he said, “would have been to keep the polls open, count the votes, segregate them, and [bring] the issue to the courts.”
Where to vote?
Thousands who showed up to vote on Election Day quickly learned that they could not vote at just any location, despite a county election department campaign to inform registered voters through their website, post office mail and social media.
A woman named Shamyra, who only wanted to share her first name, said Tuesday she didn't know voting locations were assigned by precinct and worried that she wouldn't make it to the right location in time.
"Today I'm just kind of driving around trying to figure out where to vote," she said. "So this is about my fourth building. I've been to just because I go somewhere, they tell me to go somewhere else."
The long and winding road
But the rocky road to voters being turned away from casting ballots in the 2026 primary election did not start when polls opened at 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
For Dallas County voters, it began in 2024.
Early that year, the Dallas County Republican Party shared a vision statement that supported counting ballots by hand to restore election confidence.
Moving forward with that plan failed by one vote.
A discussion to try again followed in early summer 2025.
By Sept. 9, the bipartisan Dallas County Election Commission unanimously chose Ohio’s Paul Adams to take over as the county’s elections administrator.
Less than one week later, the local Republican Party again voted to hand-count primary election ballots — this time, it passed.
Adams arrived the next month and began working on strategies to hold separate Democratic and Republican primaries.
Trump weighs in
On Dec. 2, Donald Trump incorrectly posted on social media that Dallas County would use all paper ballots.
Financial reimbursement and logistical and personnel challenges caused Republicans to abandon their hand-counting ballot effort by the end of the month. Republican Party Chair Allen West said it was too risky and a decision had to be made before the contract agreement deadline with Dallas County Election Department on Dec. 31.
Hand-counting ballots would have made separate, precinct-based primaries automatic — for both Republican and Democratic parties.
Though that was off the table, the party chose to still hold separate primaries. That meant Republican and Democratic voters could vote only at one location designated by a voter’s registration address.
Those polling places, and countywide early voting locations, were due about one month before early voting started Feb. 17. Early voting locations weren’t agreed upon and finalized until Feb. 13.
Adams, the elections administrator, warned of polling place confusion long before Tuesday's election. He told county commissioners in a Feb. 3 meeting that separate Republican and Democratic elections had stressed planning.
"This is a severe strain on the office," he said. "Because as we look at making changes, we're at a point where — we're 28 days from this election — to make sure that the public can be made aware and then internally we can order enough supplies and make sure everything is properly delivered."
In separate elections, each party is responsible for securing and contracting Election Day polling places.
Those were not executed and finalized until Feb. 18 — less than two weeks before Election Day — which meant voters still did not know and could not plan where to vote in their respective primary.
Record voter turnout
It was clear that the 2026 primary election would set Dallas County voter turnout records when early voting ended Feb. 27.
Daily turnout usually is in the very low thousands. Typically, 1,000 to 3,000 Republicans and Democrats combined show up each day during primary and mid-term early voting, according to the elections department.
This time, the daily average was about 17,000 Democrats and just under 6,000 Republicans.
Nearly 188,000 Democrats and 64,000 Republicans cast ballots during early voting. That's about 17 percent of Dallas County's more than 1.4 million registered voters who had cast ballots ahead of primary Election Day.
That surpassed 2018's total early voting and primary Election Day turnout of 16 percent.
Final election day numbers will tell whether this year beats the top two highest voter turnout totals, both of which were presidential election years, unlike the current mid-term elections.
Dallas County's all-time high voter turnout is 35 percent when Barack Obama first ran of 2008.
The second highest voter turnout for a primary election was 27 percent in 2016 — when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton ran for president.
'Mass confusion' on election day?
“Bedlam” began Election Day morning and continued through the night, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price said, who has served the county for more than 50 years.
Hundreds, and then thousands, of voters showed up to wrong polling places.
Election department “navigators” posted at voting locations redirected people, often not knowing whether the voters eventually found their correct polling place and cast a vote.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who ultimately lost her bid to become the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas to Austin State Rep. James Talarico, had issued a statement on Tuesday that criticized "precinct-specific voting locations in Dallas County and Williamson County as an "effort to suppress the vote" and to "confuse and inconvenience voters" that had the intended effect of turning people away from the polls.
Early Tuesday evening, Kardal Coleman, Dallas County Democratic Party precinct chair, asked a judge to extend voting hours because of ‘mass confusion,’ according Judge Staci Williams’ order to keep polling places open until 9 p.m.
Williams' order did not specifically distinguish between Democratic polling places and Republican polling places.
However, a pop-up box on the Dallas County Elections Department site stated that "Democratic Party polling locations in Dallas County will remain open until 9:00 PM pursuant to Court Order" and that "Republican Primary polling locations will close at 7:00 PM as scheduled."
Shortly after Williams' order, Attorney General Ken Paxton's office asked the Texas Supreme Court to pause the extended voting hours. Paxton was on the Republican ballot for U.S. Senate.
The Supreme Court issued a stay Tuesday night stating that "Votes cast by voters who were not in line to vote at 7pm should be separated."
West, the Republican Party chair, praised the Supreme Court's intervention Tuesday night, saying that assertions "about the Democrats being confused" were a "very weak excuse" for what they did.
Meanwhile, Dallas County voters continued casting ballots after 7 p.m., though social media videos showed and voters reported to KERA that some election judges left or did not accept voters because of confusion over the Supreme Court order.
The election rocky road also did not end when polls closed at 7 — or 9 p.m.
The next morning, early voting and election night results revealed several local and statewide race surprises.
It became unclear whether voter confusion contributed to outcomes or whether ballots cast after 7 p.m. were included in results.
And county officials — who had speculated for months that voting changes could cause confusion and potential lawsuits and close-race legal challenges — continued their efforts to sort out the election snarls.
KERA Communities Reporter Priscilla Rice contributed to this report.
Got a tip? Email Marina Trahan Martinez at mmartinez@kera.org. You can follow Marina at @HisGirlHildy.
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