Texas Supreme Court stays order extending Dallas County voting by two hours

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“The Texas Supreme Court stayed a Dallas County judge’s order extending voting hours at Democratic polling sites until 9 p.m. due to widespread confusion caused by a switch to precinct-based voting. The confusion stemmed from the GOP’s decision to hold a separate primary and the Secretary of State’s website not being updated with new precinct maps. The ruling means ballots cast after 7 p.m. will not be counted, potentially impacting the outcome of close elections.

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A Dallas County judge had ordered Democrats get two extra hours to vote after confusion at polls. The Supreme Court stayed the order late Tuesday.

The Dallas County Elections offices pictured, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Dallas.

Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer

Shortly before polls were set to close in Dallas County Tuesday, the elections department extended voting at Democratic polling sites upon a district judge’s order citing widespread confusion throughout the day.

However, late Tuesday the Texas Supreme Court put the order extending hours from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on hold, Dallas County elections administrator Paul Adams told The Dallas Morning News. 

Ballots cast by Democrats in line after 7 p.m. would not be counted, Adams said.

Hundreds of voters were turned away from Dallas County polls when they arrived at what are typically universal voting sites but were rerouted to their assigned polling places due to a switch prompted by the county Republican Party.

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Violet Marquez was one of the voters turned away after the Texas Supreme Court blocked the order to keep polls open late.

Marquez, 45, tried to enter the MLK Branch Library in southern Dallas around 8:43 p.m. when poll workers informed her of the court ruling.

She was sent to the library after poll workers at another site determined her voting address was zoned for the library.

Several other voters were turned away at the same time. Voters were barely trickling into the site before it closed.

“I think it’s just another ploy to keep numbers swayed the other way,” Marquez said.

The GOP’s decision to hold a separate primary from Democrats this year required precinct-based voting on election day, a change from the countywide voting system that allowed residents to vote at any center regardless of their address.

The Dallas County Democratic Party petitioned a judge to extend the hours due to confusion throughout the day, according to executive director Brenda Allen. Judge Staci Williams granted the motion, citing “mass confusion” that caused the county elections website to crash, according to the order.

“We felt there was significant evidence of hundreds of voters being turned away and to not do anything on their behalf felt wrong,” Allen said. 

The extension applied only to the 279 Democratic polling locations. 

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico, both Democrats running for U.S. Senate, issued statements raising concerns about the confusion in Dallas and Williamson counties, which also reverted to election day precincts. 

The local problem was compounded because the Secretary of State’s votetexas.gov website was not updated with Dallas County’s new precinct maps changed in December after state redistricting, according to Allen. 

Some voters searching for their polling place on the state’s website were provided the wrong location. By Tuesday afternoon the state website was directing voters to use the Dallas County election’s search tool instead.

At a Tuesday evening news conference in the African American Museum of Dallas at Fair Park, Crockett outlined a range of concerns, including voters being turned away from polls, county websites crashing and more working voting machines for Republicans than Democrats.

“Listen, this may be a very close election,” Crockett said. “And it may hinge on who was allowed to vote or who wasn’t allowed to vote in Dallas County. But I’m here to say, regardless of whether it’s close or not: This is wrong.”

Standing beside Crockett, former U.S. Rep. and current congressional candidate Colin Allred said he was prepared to file a lawsuit for the extension before the judge’s order went through. Allred said their efforts are not to benefit their personal campaigns, but for the “right to vote in this state and the democracy that is at risk in this country.”

“This is bigger than just what’s happening in Dallas County or just the chaos that we’ve seen today,” he said. “It is a pattern, and one that we’re going to fight against.”

Allred said his fear is that the voters who were turned away won’t return to try again.

“A lot of the damage has been done,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us … to have a couple of extra hours to try and do what we can to rectify this, and to take this as an example of a fight that we have to have for November, because we cannot have a repeat of this.”

Before the Supreme Court overturned the voting extension, Democrat Voters who arrived after 7 p.m. were being given provisional ballots so there would be a way to track which ballots were cast as part of the extended polling hours, Solorzano said.

Around five Democratic voters cast provisional ballots after 7 p.m. on Tuesday at Esperanza “Hope” Medrano Elementary School in Dallas, according to Democratic election judge Perla Loza. 

Loza, 38, who has been an election judge for more than a decade, said the extended period was “a little crazy” for workers after they were asked to stay late and then later told to close.

Loza said the order to close came in a message around 8:45 p.m. which said the Supreme Court had ordered polls be shut down. She added that they had to turn away one voter who arrived after that message was received.

After declining to comment on how election day was unfolding at noon, Republican Party Chair Allen West on Tuesday evening condemned the Democratic Party’s move to extend voting hours.

“The Democrats unprofessionally went behind the (Dallas County Election Department’s) legal counsel to acquire an order due to their own incompetence,” West said in a text message. “You can be coy and call it confusion but it doesn’t warrant the violation of their contract with the DCED.”

Crockett said the issues are a product of Republicans intentionally changing the voting process “to disenfranchise and confuse voters.”

“It is wrong for it to be done to anyone — a Democrat or a Republican,” she said. “But the Republicans didn’t even have enough sense or enough courage to go out there and try to get a court order on behalf of their constituents.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Dallas Morning News reporters William Tong and Nick Wooten contributed to this report.“