Dallas County residents will need to be extra prepared on Tuesday, election day for all Texans.
For the first time in seven years, all Dallas County voters on Tuesday must cast their ballot at their assigned polling place instead of a universal voting center due to the local Republican Party’s decision to hold a separate primary from Democrats.
County officials and voting rights advocates have anticipated widespread confusion as residents accustomed to voting at any location since 2019 may show up to the wrong place — causing frustration at best and disenfranchisement at worst if they give up rather than reroute to their precinct.
Their advice: Residents should confirm their polling place before heading out to vote by using the Dallas County Elections Department’s interactive tool or calling 469-627-8683.
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The county will also deploy navigators in green shirts to many polling sites to redirect people to their correct locations.
In places with no navigators, the county will post QR codes for people to scan and pull up their voting site information on their cellphones.
“I have been concerned about this issue ever since we knew this would be a non-joint primary,” elections administrator Paul Adams said. “This is not a problem we created, but it’s a problem we’re working diligently to mitigate.”
County officials control early voting under state law, so residents were still able to vote at any universal vote center regardless of their address during the 10 day period that ended Friday.
But the separate primary required different check-in tables, workers and voting machines for each party inside shared locations.
On election day about 173 polling places will be shared by Democrats and Republicans, but 177 others will be party specific.
Split sites
In some precincts, Democrats and Republicans will have to report to different polling sites, even if they are neighbors or family in the same household but belong to different parties.
Amber Mills, issue advocacy director of MOVE Texas Civic Fund, predicts hundreds or thousands of Dallas County voters may show up to what has been a countywide vote center just to be turned away and told to go to their precinct.
In a statement, she condemned the Republican Party’s push for precincts after years of residents getting used to the convenience of universal voting centers, calling it an attempt to “manipulate election outcomes” in a primary already seeing high turnout.
“Abrupt changes to the voting process create chaos,” Mills said. “Chaos discourages participation. And discouraging participation harms democracy.”
Republican Party chair Allen West declined to comment Monday on the unease ahead of election day. West previously said precinct-based voting “reduces the opportunity for fraudulent activity,” although research shows voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the U.S.
The Dallas County Commissioners Court spent $1 million on home mailers and advertisements to alert residents of the change and avoid confusion on election day.
But the separate primaries also put added strain on the elections department, which the parties contract with to run the election.
And it is the first primary for Adams since he began as Dallas County’s elections administrator Oct. 1 after 15 years leading elections in Lorain, Ohio, just west of Cleveland.
The county trained 171 navigators who will be sent to the polling places with the largest turnout and locations that were previously early voting centers, Adams said.
Late changes
Both Democratic and Republican officials were making last-minute changes to their polling places as late as Feb. 9, and Adams said county elections staff worked until after midnight on some days to ensure the delivery of equipment to the polls.
Because the nonjoint primary requires separate equipment for each party, Adams said the department had to allocate supplies on the scale of a presidential election.
“By election day our warehouses will look nearly as empty as Santa’s workshop on Christmas Eve,” he said.
Sandy Thornton, president of the League of Women Voters of Dallas, said she and fellow navigators will be working to catch people early and often at the polls on Tuesday to ensure they are in the right place.
The last thing Thornton said she wants is to see people waiting in line for 20 minutes just to find out they need to go elsewhere.
Above all, she encouraged people to not give up their right to cast their ballot.
“It’s important,” she said, “go vote.”