I know, I know, I’m shocked too.
At least 12,674 Dallas County voters trying to cast ballots in both party primaries showed up at the wrong polling locations March 3 after the county GOP forced the elimination of countywide polling sites on Election Day, county data shows.
Democrats had more than double the number of primary voters in Dallas County as Republicans so, unsurprisingly, a larger number of Democratic voters had to be redirected to the correct site, according to a Votebeat analysis of data provided by Dallas County election officials. But similar percentages of voters from both parties were affected by the change.
Out of the total voter turnout on Election Day, at least 6,641 voters, or 7.7%, seeking to cast ballots in the Democratic primary, and 2,369 voters, or 6.4%, seeking to cast ballots in the Republican primary, went to the wrong voting site. Those voters subsequently received texts from county representatives stationed at polling sites to redirect voters to the correct places, according to the county data, which was obtained by Votebeat via a public records request.
Those numbers don’t reflect the full number of affected voters, either. The county couldn’t determine a party for at least 3,638 additional voters who also received texts because they were redirected to voting locations used by both parties, county officials said. And for 26 other voters in the data, the county had no information. Poll workers also redirected other voters who chose not to receive texts and aren’t reflected in the data, according to Paul Adams, the Dallas County elections administrator.
Allen West, the chairman of the Dallas Republican party, had suggested in a statement on March 4 that the change had affected Democratic voters more than Republican ones.
“Yesterday Republican voters in Dallas County evidenced their ability to adapt and overcome proving that precinct level voting can be accomplished on primary Election Day,” West said in a statement the party posted on social media. “It’s apparent that Democrats struggled with grasping basic civics.”
West, who declined to comment on Votebeat’s findings for this story, has since said Republicans will agree to use countywide voting sites for the upcoming May 26 runoff election, citing the potential for confusion. It’s not clear whether West has signed a contract with the Dallas County Elections Department to make the move official. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kardal Coleman, the Dallas County Democratic Party Chair said the new findings were not surprising. “In every conversation we said that this type of irresponsible pursuit was going to result in disenfranchisement of all voters, not just Democratic voters, and the data speaks just to that,” Coleman said.
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Republicans in Eastland County, west of Fort Worth, and Williamson County, north of Austin, made similar decisions to switch to precincts, which also led to voter confusion. Republicans in Williamson County have now also said they’ll return to countywide voting for the runoff election. Eastland County Republicans have yet to make a decision, according to county election officials
See here for the previous update. The best part of this story was Allen West, who as they say couldn’t pour water out of a boot if you wrote the instructions on the heel, disparaging Democratic voters’ intelligence. Gratuitous insults aside, of course there was going to be universal confusion. Precinct voting was confusing back in the day when it was the only option on Election Day, especially for non-November elections where precincts needed to be consolidated. The whole point of voting centers – and it was Republican counties like Lubbock that were pioneers with them – is to avoid that kind of needless confusion. But the Republicans like Allen West who are pushing to eliminate them don’t care about any of that, and they don’t care if it makes it harder for their own voters as well. And so here we are.