Texas

In Texas political parties choose how to run their primaries. Here’s how that causes headaches for voters. | Natalia Contreras/Dallas Free Press

By all accounts, the administration of the 2026 primary election in Williamson County was calamitous. Voters did not know where to vote. Lines were long and chaotic. Election workers made errors and misplaced ballots. Nearly everyone seems to agree on who’s to blame: the Williamson County Republican Party, which last fall decided to eliminate countywide voting and, for the first time in more than a decade, force all voters to cast ballots at assigned precincts instead. Republicans in Dallas and Eastland counties made the same decision. The moves set off a chain reaction of problems. “It was a mess, and I’m not going to deny that it was a mess,” said Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, at a county commissioners court meeting days after the March election, though she said Republicans weren’t the only ones responsible. The meeting, inside the county courthouse in downtown Georgetown, an affluent suburb of Austin, was packed with upset voters and poll workers, who applauded a line of unhappy speakers. Read Article

Texas appeals court rejects Dallas County Republican’s move to force precincts in runoff | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

One month before the primary runoff, a Texas appeals court has rejected a Republican precinct chair’s emergency effort to force the Dallas County elections chief to reinstate precinct-based voting. he ruling leaves countywide voting in place for the May 26 runoff, but the conflict may not be over, with GOP leaders weighing next legal steps as Democrats cheered the decision as a win for voter access. In a petition filed last week, Barry Wernick alleged that former Dallas County Republican chair Allen West’s amendment to the party’s contract with the county that scrapped precincts for the runoff was invalid because he did not have authorization from the party’s executive committee. Read Article

Texas: New lawsuit seeks to force Dallas County to use precinct voting again for runoff after messy primary | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Some Dallas County Republicans on Monday sued the county elections department in a bid to require voters to cast ballots for the May 26 primary runoff at specific polling places in their precincts rather than any location in the county. That precinct-based voting system on primary election day in March created chaos. Local party leadership is trying to reverse a decision made by its former chair, who resigned last week after facing backlash for agreeing to use countywide voting on election day in the runoff. But early voting for the runoff election starts May 18, and Dallas County election officials say it’s too late to change course. The lawsuit, filed in the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals by Barry Wernick, a Republican precinct chair and a candidate for Dallas County Commissioner District 2, is asking the court to require the county to use precinct polling places for the runoff election. Some Dallas Republicans sue county to force a return to precinct voting for May runoff - Votebeat

Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security | Natalia Contreras/Houston Public Media

At least three Texas counties last week either received or were told they would soon receive administrative subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department is seeking detailed records about some individual voters, including their registration applications and voter history, though counties don't yet know which ones. The subpoenas appear to be linked to a series of efforts by the Trump administration to verify the citizenship of registered voters. In December, Texas turned over the state's voter roll to the Justice Department. The transfer included voters' identifiable information such as dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. It did not include, however, voters' registration applications or signatures — the state does not have access to that information, which is kept by county voter registrars. Lubbock County's elections administrator, Roxzine Stinson, said she met with a Homeland Security representative who informed her she would soon receive a subpoena seeking additional information for at least 10 voters, and potentially up to 30. Stinson said she'll seek guidance from the county's legal department on how to respond. The Homeland Security representative told Stinson, "all 254 counties will be contacted," she said. Read Article

Texas: Thousands of Dallas County voters went to wrong polling site | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

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. Read Article

Texas: Dallas County GOP will OK countywide voting sites for May 26 runoff | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Dallas County Republicans will agree to allow voters to cast ballots at countywide voting sites for the May 26 runoff election after a switch to precinct-based voting sites caused chaos, the county party chair said Tuesday. Dallas County Republican Chair Allen West supported the use of precinct-based sites earlier this month, but said using precincts again for the runoff would expose the county party to “increased risk and voter confusion” because the county is planning to use countywide sites for upcoming municipal elections and early voting. “To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large scale disruption,” West said in a statement. That’s what critics say resulted from the Dallas GOP’s decision to use precinct sites on Election Day for the primary on March 3. Dallas GOP will OK countywide voting sites for May 26 runoff

Texas: Problems with primary election could be midterms preview | Nathaniel Rakich/Votebeat

Election officials, start your engines.The 2026 midterm elections officially kicked off last week with primary elections in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas. It was the first big test for hundreds of candidates who are vying to take up residence in Washington, D.C., and state capitals next year — but it was also a dress rehearsal for election officials in a year expected to pose unusual and daunting administrative challenges.And things were a little rocky.While the election went smoothly for a majority of voters and jurisdictions, thousands of voters were affected by problems in Texas in particular.Some of those — like a poll-worker shortage in South Texas or malfunctioning electronic pollbooks in northeastern North Carolina and El Paso, Texas — were routine, inevitable in a country with thousands of election jurisdictions and just as many things that can go wrong. Read Article

Texas: Calhoun County GOP missed deadline to report primary election results after choosing to hand-count ballots | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

<p>Calhoun County finished submitting its primary election results to the state Friday morning after county Republicans, who hand counted their primary ballots, missed a deadline in state law requiring them to submit early-voting and Election Day results to the county no later than 24 hours after polls closed, a county election official said. Mary Ann Orta, the elections administrator in the South Texas county, which includes Victoria and Port Lavaca, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office both confirmed the county GOP missed the deadline and its results were submitted to the state Friday morning. The results for county Democrats, who used electronic voting equipment to tabulate ballots, were submitted to the state not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Orta said. In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered, and Calhoun Republicans chose to hand count ballots this year, including those cast early and at 11 Republican precincts on Election Day, a labor-intensive process. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/06/texas-counties-hand-count-ballots-deadline/" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/06/texas-counties-hand-count-ballots-deadline/">Read Article</a></p>

Texas: In Dallas County, frustration and confusion after GOP forces switch to precinct-based voting | Camilo Diaz Jr. and Jessica Huseman/The Texas Tribune

Veronica Anderson walked 2 ½ miles Tuesday afternoon to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center because she wanted to vote. When she arrived, election workers told her she was at the wrong polling place and would need to cast her ballot at a different precinct — one she said she had never heard of. Unsure where it was or how to get there, she stood outside trying to sort out her options. Anderson was one of hundreds of voters across Dallas County on Tuesday who went to the wrong voting location as they tried to cast ballots in the state’s high-turnout primaries, with closely watched contests for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket. Under state law, political parties have wide authority to decide how to run county primaries. The confusion stemmed from a decision by the Dallas County Republican Party to abandon the use of countywide vote centers — which allow voters to cast a ballot at any location — and return to a system of precinct-based assigned polling places for Election Day. That decision forced Dallas Democrats to do the same. Voters were still able to cast ballots at countywide sites during early voting. Read Article

Texas: Eastland County’s hand count of Republican primary ballots stretched into Wednesday as residents waited on results | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Just after midnight, as Election Day became Wednesday, workers at a polling place in the city of Rising Star called Eastland County election administrator Temi Nichols with a problem. They told Nichols some workers tasked with hand counting the GOP ballots cast at that location had decided to call it quits, she told a reporter afterwards, and she tried to talk those on the phone out of joining them “Please don’t load up and take off,” Nichols said. The workers on the other end of the phone said they weren’t sure how to read the tally sheets the other workers had left behind or fill out the required paperwork, among other things, according to Nichols. They asked her if they could go home and finish counting in the morning. Read Article

Texas: Eastland County Republicans scramble as hand-count of primary ballots looms | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

On Monday, a group of four people spent more than an hour at a table inside a Realtor’s office, hand-counting the results of two races on 100 sample ballots. It was only a week before Tuesday’s primary election, and for this small group, it was their first time practicing to tally votes by hand. They counted in batches of 25 and used different colored markers to keep track of where one counted batch ended and a new one began. They also used laminated tally sheets, which allowed them to erase and remark them if they made any errors. The group twice marked a vote for the wrong candidate, an error that meant they had to go back and start over and correct their laminated sheets. But on Election Day, “you won’t be able to erase the errors on the sheet. That’s why we practice,” said Robin Hayes, the county’s GOP chair, who was training the group. Hayes hasn’t yet participated in an official hand-count herself, but said she’s attended trainings to learn how to do it and has been preparing and training other volunteers for months. Read Article

Texas: Gillespie County Republicans scale back hand-count amid staffing shortage | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Gillespie County Republicans have scrapped plans to hand-count all of their 2026 primary ballots after failing to recruit enough workers — at least for early voting. The lack of manpower prompted party officials to vote last week to use the county’s voting equipment to tabulate thousands of ballots expected to be cast during the two weeks before Election Day on March 3. However, Gillespie Republicans still plan to hand-count ballots cast on Election Day, party officials told Votebeat. The effort has deepened a divide within the county party: Some members wish to ditch electronic voting equipment entirely and hand-count all ballots, while others trust that the county’s electronic voting equipment is safe and the process contains appropriate checks and balances. It’s a continuation of a long-running disagreement that began in 2024, when the county party first hand-counted primary ballots. Read Article

Texas: SAVE tool keeps mistakenly flagging voters as noncitizens | Jen Fifield and Zach Despart/The Texas Tribune

When county clerk Brianna Lennon got an email in November saying a newly expanded federal system had flagged 74 people on the county’s voter roll as potential noncitizens, she was taken aback. Lennon, who’d run elections in Boone County, Missouri, for seven years, had heard the tool might not be accurate. The flagged voters’ registration paperwork confirmed Lennon’s suspicions. The form for the second person on the list bore the initials of a member of her staff, who’d helped the man register — at his naturalization ceremony. It later turned out more than half the Boone County voters identified as noncitizens were actually citizens. A similar situation has been playing out in Texas, where county clerks have likewise found numerous examples of misidentified voters across the state. Read Article

Texas’ troubled election software and new congressional maps delay voter registration cards | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas’ unusual mid-decade redistricting and problems with the state’s new voter registration system have delayed the mailing of voter registration certificates, the documents that give voters information about their polling place and their assigned districts, state and local officials say. Under state law, the certificates should have been issued by Dec. 6, though there’s no penalty for a late mailing. With early voting for the March 3 primaries set to begin Feb. 17, the delay has confused some voters who were expecting to have received the certificates by now, and multiple election officials said they have been fielding calls and questions about the missing certificates for weeks. The certificates are small postcards that counties send to registered voters every two years, listing the voter’s local voting precinct, their congressional, state Senate and House districts, county precincts, and city and school districts. Read Article

Texas attorney general acted in bad faith against Latino civic group Jolt, judge rules | Eleanor Klibanoff and Alex Nguyen/The Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton failed to offer “any plausible proof” that Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is violating the law, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Paxton had filed a lawsuit in state court accusing Jolt of submitting “unlawful voter registration applications,” specifying in a press release that the group was “attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals.” The suit, which seeks to revoke Jolt’s nonprofit charter through a legal mechanism known as a quo warranto petition, was put on ice by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who said in his ruling that Paxton appears to be operating in bad faith. The attorney general’s case against Jolt “supposes absolutely no wrongdoing,” and indicates that the attorney general may be “harassing [Jolt] and fishing for reasons to investigate its organization.” Read Article

Texas lawsuit claiming that numbering system threatens ballot secrecy dismissed | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative activists who challenged the use of electronic voting equipment to randomly number ballots in Texas on the grounds that the practice compromised ballot secrecy. Judge David Alan Ezra of U.S. District Court in Austin ruled that the case, filed in 2024 by longtime Texas election activist Laura Pressley and voters from three counties, was moot because the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has since prohibited counties from using electronic pollbooks to generate and print numbers on ballot paper. He also wrote that two of the counties named in the suit, Williamson and Bell, had taken steps to eliminate the use of pollbooks to number ballot paper, and that the third, Llano County, doesn’t use them for that purpose. Read Article

Texas Republicans drive a big change to voting. Democrats will have to follow | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

In an about-face, Dallas County Republicans last week decided against hand-counting ballots in Texas’ March primary, saying they weren’t able to line up enough workers, among other hurdles. That leaves just two counties where Republicans will hand-count their primary ballots: Gillespie County, west of Austin, and Eastland County, southwest of Fort Worth. But Republicans in Dallas and Williamson counties are planning another major change for the March 3 primary election that will also require more election workers, and will affect how voters cast their ballots: They intend to eliminate the use of countywide voting sites on Election Day. That means voters in these counties — Republicans and Democrats — would be required to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood polling places instead of at more centralized polling locations that can accommodate any voter from anywhere in the county. Read Article

Texas: Republicans in two counties ditch plans to hand-count ballots | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Texas Republicans in two counties who were pushing to count ballots by hand in their March primaries are abandoning their plans, citing logistical concerns. The Dallas County Republican Party said it called off its efforts after it struggled to recruit enough volunteers and stay on budget. And the Hays County Republican Party said it ran into issues around complying with federal voting laws. Republicans in both counties will use ballot-counting machines, as they have in the past, for the March 3 primary, which features contests for the Senate, the House, governor and other down-ballot offices. In Texas, political parties, not local governments, are in charge of Election Day voting in primaries, a process that gives partisan officials unusual authority over election administration. Democrats and Republicans in the state often administer elections jointly and outsource the tasks to county election officials, so their expenses can be reimbursed by the Texas secretary of state. Read Article

Texas: Some registered voters flagged as “potential noncitizens” had already shown DPS proof of citizenship | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Texas officials have now determined that 11 registered voters in Travis County flagged as potential noncitizens actually provided proof of citizenship while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to county leaders. State officials generated the list of potential noncitizens by checking the state’s voter roll — more than 18 million registered voters — against a federal database used to verify citizenship. The Trump administration overhauled the database, known as SAVE, this year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and it has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it had not initially checked the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the federal database against DPS records. State officials in October sent the list to county officials and directed them to investigate the citizenship status of those flagged registrants.

Texas: Dallas County Republicans proceed with plan to hand count ballots in March primary | Tracey McManus/Dallas Morning News

The Dallas County Republican Party will proceed with hand-counting thousands of hand-marked paper ballots on the March 3 primary’s Election Day, positioning the county to become the largest in the United States with a manually counted election. The party’s executive committee voted in September to explore the concept, but GOP chair Allen West confirmed on Friday he will sign a contract with the Dallas County Elections Department to hold a separate primary from Democrats to enact a Republican hand count. Research shows the cost, time demands and risk of human error make hand counting far less reliable than machine tabulation, and fewer than 1% of Americans live in jurisdictions with the manual process. But the practice has been evoked in recent years amid misinformation around the accuracy of voting equipment, and President Donald Trump has pledged to eliminate voting machines and mail ballots. Read Article

Texas: Hundreds of voters flagged as potential noncitizens may have already proven their citizenship | Natalia Contreras/Texas Tribune

County election officials investigating the eligibility of 2,724 Texas voters flagged as potential noncitizens have so far found that hundreds of the voters registered through the state Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID. DPS keeps copies of the proof of citizenship that registrants provide, such as birth certificates or passports. The agency also keeps copies of proof of lawful presence in the U.S., such as green cards, provided by immigrants. But the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune it did not check the voters flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to verify citizenship. Re4ad Article

Texas: Trump inaccurately praises paper ballot use in Dallas County | Tracey McManus/The Dallas Morning News

President Donald Trump inaccurately announced in a Truth Social post early Tuesday that “Dallas County, Texas, just went to all PAPER BALLOTS.” For years, the Dallas County Elections Department has used paper ballots that voters insert into machines to mark their selections and then put into tabulators to be counted. In September, the Dallas County Republican Party voted to explore the prospect of hand-counting hand-marked paper ballots on the March 3 primary’s Election Day, not during early voting. But the party has not confirmed if it will go forward with the plan and is slated to make the decision on Thursday, according to GOP chair Allen West. The president’s social media post drew surprise from Commissioners Court members during their Tuesday meeting, where County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins clarified Trump’s message “was incorrect.” It also prompted commissioners to share worries over the Republicans’ plan if it advances. Read Article

Texas Republicans in some counties are pushing to count ballots by hand in next year’s primary | Jane C. Timm/NBC

Republicans in at least a half-dozen counties in Texas are considering or have made plans to count ballots by hand in next March's primary elections, a move that's financially costly and could inject uncertainty into key contests. Texas Republicans who are pushing for the shift argue that voting machines that normally handle the process are unreliable, a position President Donald Trump and his allies have been pushing for years, despite a lack of evidence. But voting experts and Democrats warn that hand-counting could result in errors, delays in final results and post-election litigation. Texas tasks political parties, rather than local governments, with running Election Day voting in primaries, giving partisan officials unusual say over election administration. Democrats and Republicans in the state often administer elections jointly, outsourcing the job to the county election officials, and their expenses are reimbursed by the secretary of state. Read Articled

Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down | Alex Nguyen and Eleanor Klibanoff/Texas Tribune

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.” This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House. Read Article

Texas asked to halt rollout of updated voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Groups representing election officials across Texas are asking the state to halt the rollout of its updated voter registration system and address issues that they say “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups outlined their complaints in a letter sent Friday to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson. County election officials across the state have for months reported problems that they say began when the state overhauled its voter registration system, known as TEAM, in July. Those issues contributed to a backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications, Votebeat reported, though that now has nearly been cleared. Election officials also said issues with TEAM were affecting their preparations for the upcoming constitutional amendment election. Read Article

Texas: Voter system switch leaves thousands of residents unverified ahead of early voting, | Shakari Briggs, John Lomax V/Houston Chronicle

Elections officials across Texas are scrambling to register voters after the near-collapse of a voter registration company led counties across the state to transfer to a system provided through the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Votec, a California-based company that has run voter registration everywhere from Harris County to Travis County, warned officials in August that a grim fiscal outlook had cast doubt on their ability to register voters ahead of the November election. The scare sparked a mass exodus of counties from Votec to the Texas Elections Management System, a statewide database that has been used by the Secretary of State’s Office to manage voter registration information since the early 2000s. But the transition to TEAM has been bumpy, and came just as the state rolled out a major update to the system. All told, the switch has left as many as 17,000 voters in Harris County and 400 in Fort Bend County in limbo with just days before early voting is scheduled to begin. Read Article

Texas: Dallas County GOP’s push to hand-count 2026 ballots could upend voting for Democrats | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Republicans in Dallas County, one of Texas’ largest voting jurisdictions, say they want to count ballots in their coming March primary by hand, if they can afford to, a change that could delay the reporting of election results and have far-reaching consequences for all of the county’s 1.5 million voters. The decision could force Dallas Democrats, as well as Republicans, to return to casting ballots at their assigned local precincts, rather than countywide vote centers, which would require finding scores of additional polling locations and hundreds more workers. It could also vastly increase the cost of holding both primaries, an increase that the parties would have to be prepared to cover on their own. Cost is one reason why Dallas County Republicans decided in 2023 against hand-counting ballots. At the time, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, then the county GOP chair, estimated the party would need more than $1 million to hand-count the more than 70,000 ballots cast in the 2024 primary. Read Article

Texas counties struggle with new voter registration system | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

Darcy Hood mailed her voter registration application to the Tarrant County elections department in July, after she turned 18. Months later, her application still hasn’t been processed. And it’s unclear when it will be. With the Oct. 6 deadline to register to vote in November’s constitutional amendment election approaching, tens of thousands of Texans are in the same situation, waiting in suspense for their applications to go through, a process that normally takes a few days or weeks. In interviews, private conversations, and emails, county elections officials from across the state point the finger at the state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, which has long had functionality problems. They say that after the software was overhauled in July, the problems began proliferating: Voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save at all. Read Article

Texas: Dallas County Republicans vote to hand-count March primary election day ballots | Tracey McManus/Dallas Morning News

Dallas County is poised to become the largest jurisdiction in the U.S. to hand-count paper ballots as the local Republican Party has decided to manually tally election day ballots during its March primary. After two hours discussing their distrust of electronic voting machines and tabulators on Monday, Dallas County Republican leaders adopted the hand-counting plan for ballots cast on March 3 but excluded ballots submitted during early voting. With more than 49,000 Republican ballots expected to be cast on election day, the endeavor presents a significant task for the party as Texas law requires vote totals be submitted to the state 24 hours after polls close on election day. The plan is contingent upon securing sufficient staffing, funding and project management, according to the resolution. DRead Article3

Some Texas counties replace touchscreen voting machines after Trump order | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

After years of using a touchscreen machine to mark their ballots, voters in at least three Texas counties will be asked instead to make their selections directly on the paper ballots, by hand, starting in November. Election officials in Collin, Williamson, and Bastrop counties said they’re proactively changing their voting procedures and equipment in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump in March that sought to mostly ban voting equipment that uses barcodes or QR codes on paper ballots to speed up vote counting. Some other provisions in the executive order have been blocked by the courts, but this one has not. The order instructed the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which crafts the certification guidelines that most states rely on for their voting equipment, to amend the guidelines to prohibit such systems and “take appropriate action” to review and rescind previously issued certifications based on prior standards. Read Article