Lauren Drewes Daniels
Audio By Carbonatix
The Texas Democratic Party is warning that confusion caused by precinct-specific voting on Election Day may have led to hundreds of Dallas voters being turned away from polling sites.
The change comes from the Dallas County GOP’s decision to hold separate primary elections from the Democrats. The change means that voters can vote only in their assigned precinct on election day, whereas in past elections, Dallas voters could cast their ballots at any center in the county. The resulting confusion is “not an accident,” said the Texas Democratic Party on Tuesday afternoon.
Poll workers at the Martin Weiss Recreation Center in Oak Cliff told the Observer this afternoon that several Dallasites hoping to vote were redirected to their proper precinct this morning, but that the confusion had largely subsided by midday. The Dallas Morning News reported that dozens of voters were turned away from the University Park United Methodist Church voting center early this morning, and 70 were told they could not vote at the Oak Lawn Branch Library despite having voted there in the past.
“Democrats pushed for a joint election. As it has been for eight years, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more accessible for every voter in the county. Republicans said no,” Kendall Scudder, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a statement.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins posted on social media that as of 3:00 p.m., 60,841 Dallasites had cast ballots on Election Day across both parties. During early voting, nearly 188,000 Democrats and 64,000 Republicans voted in Dallas County. There are 1.4 million registered voters in the county.
Another feature of the separate primaries is party-specific voting machines labeled with Red and Blue at election sites. Around 1:00 p.m. at the Samuell-Grand Recreation Center in East Dallas, voters casting a ballot in the Democratic primary stood in an hour-long line to vote while Republican machines sat unused in the same room.
According to the Texas Democratic Party, precinct-specific voting is also affecting the electorate in Williamson County north of Austin. The two counties seeing voters turned away at the polls, Dallas and Williamson, are the home counties of the Democratic hopefuls for Senate, Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico.
The state party is warning that confusion over precinct locations may begin to bottleneck voters as Texans leave work and head to the polls. In a statement, Talarico said he is “deeply concerned” and called “for an extension of voting hours to ensure all Texans’ voices are heard in this critical election.”
“If you get turned away, do not give up. Find your correct location and go vote. Polls are open until 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7, you will get to vote,” the Texas Democratic Party said in a statement. “We are leaving no stone unturned to make sure every eligible voter casts a ballot today.”
