The Republican Party in Dallas County, Texas, will return to a countywide voting system for the state’s May 26 runoff elections, after voters suffered major setbacks in the primary due to the precinct-based system earlier this month.
In a statement Tuesday announcing the decision, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West said “there comes a time to know when to claim success and not take the bridge too far.”
“I have made the decision that wanting to conduct precinct-based operations on a runoff election day exposes DCRP to increased risk and voter confusion,” West wrote. “Early voting for municipal elections and runoffs will be held from late April through May. All of these elections are countywide voting. Then changing a day’s runoff election to a precinct would cause massive disruption.”
But West does not rule out a return to the precinct system after the runoff, saying his county party “successfully executed a preliminary operation based on joint precincts on March 3, 2026” and “we can build on that success, evaluate lessons learned and improve on the process and procedures of March 2028.”
Generally, political parties in Texas oversee primary voting. Democrats and Republicans often administer elections jointly and outsource operations to county election officials, who in recent cycles run countywide polling stations that allow voters to cast their ballots wherever it’s most convenient for them.
But Republicans in Dallas County, Texas’ second most populous county, decided to hold their primaries separately at the precinct level for the March election, prompting Democrats to do the same.
The change left thousands of voters confused about where to go on March 3. Some voters turned out, others cast provisional ballots.
On March 3, a Dallas County judge ordered Democratic polling stations to stay open for an additional two hours, but that ruling was later blocked by the Texas Supreme Court.
In response to West’s announcement, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said Republicans are “scrambled to undo the damage they created” after they “caused chaos on Election Day.”
“For months, Democrats have warned that pushing for a return to a precinct-only system on Election Day would confuse voters, create long lines and turn people away from the polls, and that’s exactly what happened. It was an entirely avoidable failure that wasted taxpayer dollars and undermined voter confidence,” Scudder said in a statement.
The Williamson County Republican Party of Texas used precinct-level voting sites on March 3. A spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about whether the party would make the change for the May runoff.
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 could lead to errors and delayed results. Although they eventually abandoned their plans to count ballots by hand due to high costs, precinct-level voting is still in place.
GOP Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton face off in a high-profile primary runoff for Senate on May 26, when voters will decide the outcome of several House primaries.
