{"id":189408,"date":"2026-03-04T03:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T03:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/189408\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T03:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T03:22:08","slug":"dallas-county-voters-confused-by-polling-place-changes-for-texas-primary-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/189408\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas County voters confused by polling place changes for Texas primary election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas\u2019 free newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was published in partnership with Dallas Free Press<\/a>, a nonprofit newsroom focused on community and civic issues in Dallas. Sign up for Dallas Free Press\u2019 texts and newsletters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DALLAS, Texas \u2014 Veronica Anderson walked 2\u00bd miles Tuesday afternoon to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center because she wanted to vote.<\/p>\n

When she arrived, election workers told her she was at the wrong polling place and would need to cast her ballot at a different precinct \u2014 one she said she had never heard of. Unsure where it was or how to get there, she stood outside trying to sort out her options. <\/p>\n

\u201cI walked up here because I want to vote so, so bad,\u201d she told a reporter for the Dallas Free Press and Votebeat, adding that it felt like \u201cyour self-esteem and everything is torn down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson was one of hundreds of voters across Dallas County on Tuesday who went to the wrong voting location as they tried to cast ballots in the state\u2019s high-turnout primaries, with closely watched contests for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket. <\/p>\n

Under state law, political parties have wide authority to decide how to run county primaries. The confusion stemmed from a decision by the Dallas County Republican Party <\/a>to abandon the use of countywide vote centers \u2014 which allow voters to cast a ballot at any location \u2014 and return to a system of precinct-based assigned polling places<\/a> for Election Day, a decision that forced Dallas Democrats to do the same. Voters were still able to cast ballots at countywide sites during early voting. <\/p>\n

Dallas County Democrats had objected to the decision and warned it would confuse voters. After reports of hundreds of confused voters being redirected after going to the wrong polling place Tuesday, Democrats obtained a court order extending voting hours for Democrats in Dallas County until 9 p.m., with ballots cast after 7 p.m. counted provisionally. (The Texas Supreme Court later stayed the order<\/a>, and said ballots cast by voters who weren\u2019t in line by 7 p.m. should be separated pending a final ruling.) For their part, Republicans did not request an extension of voting hours. <\/p>\n

Dallas County has used countywide vote centers since 2019. Local Republican leaders \u2014 in Dallas and in other counties making similar changes, including Williamson \u2014 said the shift would boost voter confidence. <\/p>\n

\"ADallas County Election Navigator Edwin Hightower Jr., right, helps a voter who arrived at the wrong polling station find her correct voting location in Dallas, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (LM Otero \/ AP Photo) <\/p>\n

County and party officials said they had warned voters ahead of time that Election Day rules would be different. The Dallas County Elections Department sent text messages, mailed notices, and ran social media and streaming ads urging voters to cast ballots early and reminding them they would need to vote at their assigned precinct if they waited until Election Day, according to Nicholas Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department. <\/p>\n

The county also stationed nonpartisan \u201celection navigators\u201d outside at least 75 polling locations to redirect voters who showed up at the wrong site. Dallas County Republican Party Chair Allen West said the party had publicized the changes as well and framed the return to precinct-based voting as a matter of trust in the process. Kardal Coleman, chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, told Votebeat that Democrats have \u201ccalled, texted, we\u2019ve sent mailpieces. We\u2019ve run a full campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

How Texas safeguards elections \u2014 and what still poses a threat<\/p>\n

Get the latest reporting on voting technology, misinformation, the push for hand-counting ballots, and more in Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter, delivered twice a month.<\/p>\n

\u2018There are a lot of infuriated voters\u2019<\/p>\n

At the Anita Martinez Recreation Center in West Dallas, election navigator Juston Marine stood outside with a county-issued tablet, stopping voters before they entered.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you here to vote?\u201d he asked. \u201cCan I see your driver\u2019s license? Can you choose your party? I\u2019m just trying to make sure you\u2019re in the right location.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marine said he was redirecting every second or third voter who approached. He lost count of how many people he had sent elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of infuriated voters,\u201d he said. Some cursed at him. Others had driven across the county only to learn they were in the wrong place \u2014 including one example of a voter who traveled from Balch Springs to West Dallas and was then redirected to Cedar Hill.<\/p>\n

Ashley Feldt, who recently moved to West Dallas from East Dallas, arrived at the site with her fianc\u00e9. Marine told her she was actually assigned to vote at Hexter Elementary, miles away. Unsure she would have time to get there before polls closed, she told her fianc\u00e9 \u2014 who was assigned to the recreation center \u2014 to go ahead and vote without her.<\/p>\n

James Crolley, an Election Day inspector assigned to 12 locations ranging from downtown Dallas to Trinity Groves and West Dallas, said that voters were also surprised to find that voters assigned to the same precinct, but who vote in different parties, often weren\u2019t voting at the same sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had always voted at Mockingbird Elementary as a Republican, and you go there today, and you\u2019re like, \u2018Why am I not able to vote? This is my spot,\u2019\u201d he said, \u201cthat caused a little bit of conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problems were not confined to Dallas.<\/p>\n

Williamson County Republicans also returned to precinct-based voting and adopted a different counting process for their primary. Instead of using precinct scanners to tabulate votes throughout the day, Republican ballots were to be placed into separate boxes by precinct and scanned centrally after polls close, according to Connie Odom, a spokeswoman for Williamson County. <\/p>\n

Odom said in an email that reconciliation rules and manual review of some ballots mean few, if any, Election Day results are expected before midnight. The Democratic primary there is using the county\u2019s traditional scanner system.<\/p>\n

In Eastland County, which moved away from vote centers to enable hand-counting of ballots, election workers at the county courthouse said they had told about 68 voters by late morning that they were at the wrong location.<\/p>\n

Jennie Trejo and Keri Mitchell of Dallas Free Press and Carrie Levine, Nathaniel Rakich, and Natalia Conteras of Votebeat contributed reporting. <\/p>\n

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat\u2019s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[102,409,75334,27,29,28,216,8839,2279,75335],"class_list":["post-189408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-dallas","tag-election","tag-lm-otero-ap-photo","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tx","tag-voter","tag-voting","tag-wrong-polling-station"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}