The Dallas County Democratic Party on Tuesday dropped its initial request for a local judge to order polls to stay open after 7 p.m. on primary election day.
That appears to mean that votes cast after 7 p.m. on March 3 are unlikely to be included in the final results.
Dallas attorney Chad Baruch filed with the Texas Supreme Court saying Democrats "nonsuited" their original petition requesting Judge Staci Williams to keep polls open until 9 p.m.
"We thus believe this original proceeding is moot," the filing reads.
Williams had ordered them to stay open because of confusion over new precinct-based voting rules.
Nearly 2,000 Democratic Party ballots cast between 7 and 9 p.m. on Election Day were separated from ballots cast earlier in the day.
By Wednesday, the same day of the nonsuit filing, Dallas County's ballot board had finished reviewing by hand each ballot to determine its eligibility.
That is required by state law, but would also have helped the county comply if the Texas Supreme Court had ordered those votes to be included in final race results.
Democratic Party Chair Kardal Coleman had said previously that it's important for voters choices to be included.
"I'm not sure that there are enough provisional ballots to reverse the outcomes of any race, but I do believe that those voices should be heard and those ballots should be counted."
The number of voters turned away in the confusion who then didn't cast a ballot may never be known, Elections Administrator Paul Adams had said.
"There's maybe some ways we can get some possible information, but we won't really ever know for sure," he said.
The Democratic Party is electronically surveying voters about whether they were able to vote amid precinct-assignment confusion.
Voters reported to KERA and county officials as well as on social media that at several locations some exhausted and some confused election judges refused to accept more voters after 7 p.m.
"We sent out a message via our e-poll book system to every poll pad in the entire county so that they would have seen the message," Adams said. "And just like you, we had received reports that judges said, 'Nope, I'm done. This has been a long day. We're wrapping this up. It's been hard enough for us.'"
After they heard about that, elections officials communicated to the judges that they needed to comply.
"But there's only so much we can do when they've already packed up," Adams said. "By the time we would have sent somebody out there, they...would've closed everything down.
"Logistically, how can I reopen multiple locations where judges have decided to close in the midst of everything else that was going on?" he said. It was just completely overwhelming to our operations here."
Still, this primary election set a record for highest voter turnout, with 26 percent of more than 1.4 million registered voters casting ballots.
That surpassed 2018, when early voting high set a record at 16 percent.
Anticipating high turnout based on early voting data for this primary, some staff worked 36 hours straight starting Election Day. Some worked through weekend to transition from early vote centers to Election Day polling places and ensure correct voting equipment arrived and functioned at respective Democrat or Republican only locations.
That effort was not enough to avoid confusion, which is why extending voting hours was necessary, said Coleman, the Democratic chair.
"We had plenty of time to reverse course and plenty of times in negotiations with the Republican Party for them to not lead us to this decision," he said. "So we have to place the blame exactly where it's supposed to be. And that's with the Republican Party and their failed leadership."
Republican Party Chair Allen West said the Supreme Court pausing after-hours voting was the right decision.
"This whole thing about the Democrats being confused — I think that was a very weak excuse to do what they did," he said. "There was, I think, a contractual obligation violation, and so I think that's what they saw."
Confusion about where people go to vote will not be an issue in the November general election, Adams said, because the county has authority over those elections.
Democratic and Republican parties have legal authority over how to hold their respective Primary Election Day.
Voting hours also were extended in Williamson County north of Austin. And that decision also landed before the Texas Supreme Court.
The court's online records showed that an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project responded to a petition filed by the Texas Office of the Attorney General opposing extending voting hours.
Sarah XiYi Chen filed a response on behalf of Williamson County voters on March 5. She argued that the justices were being asked to "disenfranchise several hundred Williamson County voters who acted pursuant to a valid District Court order...."
The Williamson County case was listed as "pending" on Wednesday.
Got a tip? Email Marina Trahan Martinez at mmartinez@kera.org. You can follow Marina at @HisGirlHildy.
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