County GOP in Texas will switch voting rules for the runoff after primary day chaos

The Republican Party in Dallas County will switch back to a countywide voting system for the state’s May 26 runoff elections after voters experienced massive disruptions during the primary earlier this month due to the precinct-based system that was in place.

In a statement Tuesday announcing the decision, Dallas County Republican Party Chair Allen West said “there comes a time to know when to claim success and not go a bridge too far.”

“I have made the decision that seeking to do precinct based operations for the runoff Election Day exposes the DCRP to increased risk and voter confusion,” West wrote. “From the end of April through May there will be municipal elections and early voting for the runoff. All of these elections are countywide voting. To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large scale disruption.”

But West wouldn’t rule out returning to the precinct system after the runoff, saying that his county party had “successfully executed a non joint precinct based primary operation on March 3” and that “we can take that success, assess the lessons learned and improve upon the process and procedures for March 2028.”

Generally, political parties in Texas oversee primary voting. Democrats and Republicans often administer elections jointly and outsource the operations to county election officials, who have run countywide voting centers in recent cycles that allow voters to cast ballots wherever is most convenient for them.

But Republicans in Dallas County, the second most populous county in Texas, chose to run their primaries separately at the precinct level for the March election, forcing Democrats to do the same.

The change left thousands of voters confused over where they were supposed to go March 3. Some voters were turned away, while others cast provisional ballots.

A Dallas County judge had ordered Democratic polling sites to stay open for an additional two hours March 3, but that ruling was blocked shortly after by the Texas Supreme Court.

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In response to West's announcement, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said Republicans were “scrambling to undo the damage they created” after “causing chaos on Election Day.”

“For months, Democrats warned that forcing a return to a precinct-only system during Election Day would confuse voters, create long lines, and turn people away from the polls, and that’s exactly what happened. This was a completely avoidable failure that wasted taxpayer dollars and undermined voter confidence,” Scudder said in a statement.

The Williamson County Republican Party in Texas also used precinct-level voting sites on March 3. Williamson County GOP spokesperson Michelle Evans said in an email Wednesday that the party was "in talks to modify" their system for the May runoff, like Dallas County, but that nothing was finalized yet.

In Dallas County, Republicans initially made the change in hopes of counting their primary ballots by hand, a process rooted in conspiracy theories about the accuracy of voting machines that election experts warn can lead to errors and delayed results. While they ultimately abandoned their plans to count ballots by hand because of the high costs, precinct-level voting still went into effect.

GOP Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are facing off in a high-profile primary runoff for Senate on May 26, when voters will also decide the outcome of several House primaries.