It’s Tuesday — election day in Dallas County — and an hour has passed since polls opened for a pivotal set of primaries. At Fretz Park Library on the north side of the city, roughly 90 voters have come and gone.
Yet, if the poll workers had to guess, only 15 ballots had been cast.
“Most people don’t know their precinct numbers,” one worker said, “and they don’t know that their party’s not even here.”
For the first time in nearly a decade, voters were required to cast ballots at their assigned neighborhood precinct instead of a universal voting center, a change imposed by the county’s Republican party in December.
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Allen West, chair of the county GOP, said he pushed for separate primaries to reduce the opportunity for voter fraud, an exceedingly rare occurrence in the U.S. Despite efforts from Democratic leaders to maintain the status quo, state law only allows countywide voting on election day if both parties agree.
Check-in tables, workers and voting machines were divided by party, and red and blue arrows directed voters to opposite sides of the room, leaving them no choice but to pronounce affiliation. Election navigators were assigned to direct voters to the correct precinct if they showed up at the wrong location.
Hundreds did.
By sundown, concerns of voter disenfranchisement from lawmakers and election experts had come to fruition. Frustrated residents struggled to navigate shifting poll sites, downed websites and long, winding election lines – others gave up entirely.
After an emergency extension and an intervention from the state’s Supreme Court, Dallas County – a stronghold for Democrats – became ground zero for a voting rights dispute with implications well beyond its borders.
“If the goal of the Republican Party was to make voting more difficult, they have succeeded this day,” said County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman, who is running for a second term.
Signs tell voters which precincts are assigned to Oak Lawn Branch Library in the Democrat and Republican races on Primary Election Day, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Dallas.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
First time voter Brandy McIver (center left) is directed to a different polling location as she tries to vote at Oak Lawn Branch Library on Primary Election Day, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Dallas.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
7 a.m. to 12 p.m. – polls open and North Texans struggle with precinct change
Confusion took hold minutes after 7 a.m., when Catherine Lynch, who lives in Irving, showed up to Irving City Hall only to learn she was in the wrong place.
Lynch didn’t have to be at work until 11 a.m., so the change didn’t keep her from voting. Instead, it sent her to another location on Story Road, where she found herself in good company.
Lines also stretched far in neighboring counties. At the Elzie Odom Athletic Center in Arlington, the line for Democrats ran out the front door and onto the sidewalk. Meanwhile, the line for Republican voters was considerably shorter, a trend that would recur throughout the day.
At the Tarrant County Subcourthouse in Mansfield, Della Sapp told a reporter there was already a line at the polling place when she arrived at 5:30 a.m., an hour and a half before voting began: “It almost reminds you of Black Friday,” she said.
At Oak Lawn Branch Library, Lauryn Barnes, 42, frantically searched her phone to figure out where she was supposed to go: “I love voting here,” she said, exasperated. “It’s my favorite library, because it’s where the rainbow crosswalk still exists.”
State resources offered little relief.
After Texas underwent a rare, controversial redistricting in December, the Secretary of State’s votetexas.gov website wasn’t updated with Dallas County’s precinct maps, so some voters were provided the wrong location.
By Tuesday afternoon, the website was directing voters to use Dallas County’s search tool instead.
As traffic increased, the county site crashed.
12 p.m. to 5 p.m. – voting location website crash leads to frustration
Ryan Rieg, 45, had had enough. His search online took him on a 25-minute drive from his office to a voting site in Irving. A poll worker scanned his card and said he needed to vote at a different site. His wife, on the other hand, was directed to another location on Canty Street.
When he arrived at the new location, he was told once again to move. This time, it was back to the Canty Street location his wife was sent. The process had been “awful”, he said, and he was fed up with the entrenched Republican leadership in Texas.
Rieg said he didn’t identify as a Democrat, but the GOP policies to benefit large corporations and political allies had left a bitter taste in his mouth. Frustrations at voting locations only exacerbated issues because lower voter turnout, he said, favored Republicans and increased their chances of staying in power.
A line queues outside of the Irving City Hall polling center during Primary Election Day on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Irving, Texas.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Another household was facing similar struggles at St. Paul’s Church.
“We voted here before and never had any issues,” said Dustin Moheit, who was waiting for his wife outside the polling site. Moments later, a noticeably irritated Stephanie Moheit appeared.
She had not been allowed to vote even as her husband was able to. “I even checked to make sure I was registered to vote,” she said. Eventually, she gave up. The new polling location was too far and she had to get back to work.
Later Tuesday afternoon, Fernando Banales, 48, who has voted in Dallas County for more than a decade, arrived at Casa View Elementary mid-afternoon after being redirected from his typical voting location. He was not impressed with the school’s setup, which held only five voting booths and one machine to process ballots.
For Douglas Davis Jr., a longtime South Dallas resident, the experience felt reminiscent of an era when African Americans were subjected to poll taxes — fees eligible voters were required to pay to cast a ballot. He said he still has the receipt from a poll tax his father paid a decade before Davis Jr. was born.
“[For] my father, voting was important enough for him, a Black man in Dallas, Texas, in 1947, to pay for that poll tax for the opportunity to vote. I still have that receipt, it’s one of the most treasured things I own… [It’s] part of Black American history that you don’t hear about.”
5 p.m. to 9 p.m. – extended voting hours announced, then removed
Minutes before 5 p.m., the county Democratic Party filed an emergency petition to extend voting hours from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The request was granted soon after, with a judge writing that voters had endured “mass confusion” as to where they were entitled to cast their ballots.
“Voter confusion was so severe that the county election department website crashed,” the order read. The change meant elections office staff needed to inform thousands of workers across the county to keep operations running for an additional three hours.
Nic Solorzano, the county elections spokesperson, said Democratic primary voters who got in line during the extension would use provisional ballots. If a judge overturned Tuesday’s court ruling to extend polling place times, the provisional ballots would help election officials segment out votes cast after polls were originally scheduled to close.
Democratic candidates were sounding the alarm.
As 6:30 p.m. neared, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and State Rep. Colin Allred gathered for a news conference at the African American Museum of Dallas in Fair Park, where Crockett, an U.S. Senate candidate, outlined a range of concerns she’d heard from voters, including reports of more working voting machines for Republicans than Democrats.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett speaks during a news conference as former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred looks on at the African American Museum, Tuesday, March 3, 2026.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
“Listen, this may be a very close election,” Crockett said. “And it may hinge on who was allowed to vote or who wasn’t allowed to vote in Dallas County. But I’m here to say, regardless of whether it’s close or not, this is wrong.”
Allred, a congressional candidate, said he feared the damage had already been done.
“This is an opportunity for us … to have a couple of extra hours to try and do what we can to rectify this, and to take this as an example of a fight that we have to have for November, because we cannot have a repeat of this,” he said.
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office challenged the district court’s ruling to extend voting hours with the Texas Supreme Court, arguing the lower court did not properly inform him of the ruling. He filed a similar request against Williamson County’s move to extend voting hours to 10 p.m.
By 8:55 p.m., Dallas County Elections Administrator Paul Adams was informing county workers the Texas Supreme Court stayed the district court’s extension. Polls were closed to voters who joined the queue after 7 p.m.
Dallas County Democrats watch Primary results on a tv during a watch party at Community Beer Co., Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Dallas.
Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer
Violet Marquez, 45, was trying to enter the MLK Branch Library in southern Dallas when poll workers informed her that the Supreme Court had backtracked. That was after she had already been turned away from another voting site.
“I think it’s just another ploy to keep numbers swayed the other way,” Marquez said.
9 p.m. to 12 a.m. – results start coming in, voters are forced to leave after 7 p.m. cutoff, watch parties ensue
Vote tallies had just started trickling in, most candidates were locked in races with no clear winners, when Allred’s campaign accidentally blasted a mass text claiming victory.
“We just won our primary election, and now I’m officially the Democratic nominee for Texas’ 33rd Congressional District!” the text read. “Thank you to my fellow Texans for entrusting me with this honor and to grassroots supporters like you for being by my side.”
Neither candidate in Allred’s congressional race secured more than 50% of the votes so far, potentially triggering a runoff. He faces current U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, who first won the seat in 2024 after Allred moved on to run for Senate.
Elsewhere at Crockett’s Club Vivo watch party in downtown Dallas, crowds had largely cleared out by 10 p.m. The congresswoman gave only a brief speech, stating she expected the day’s events would delay results, too.
Residents wait in line to cast their votes past 10 p.m during primary election night, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026 at Samuell-Grand Recreation Center in Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
As Crockett walked off stage, some voters were still in line at Samuel Grand Recreation Center in East Dallas. Coleman Counihan, 31, said he got redirected to the Samuel Grand after trying to vote at another location.
Counihan arrived at 6:30 p.m. He was still in line at 10:30 p.m.
Some voters were using their GPS as proof they were in line before the polls were scheduled to close. It was an important distinction, given that ballots cast by people arriving after 7 p.m. were likely not to be counted.
Solorzano, the elections office’s communications manager, said that at about 11:15 p.m., no regional sites had finished collecting ballots. Fifteen minutes later, the county posted its first election day returns for the Republican primary.
It could be hours, Solorzano said, before election day ballots for both sides were fully counted.
Staff writers Tracey McManus, Wilborn P. Nobles III, Silas Allen, Emily Brindley, Jessica Ma, Maria Ramos Pacheco, Hedija Spahalic, Lauren Caruba, Miriam Fauzia, Wooten, Everton Bailey Jr., Victoria Baeza Garcia, William Tong contributed to the report.
