By Tracey McManus, The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Hundreds of voters were turned away from Dallas County polls before noon Tuesday when they arrived at their typical voting sites but were rerouted to their assigned polling place due to a switch prompted by the county Republican Party.
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 in place since 2019 that allowed residents to vote at any center regardless of their address.
The switch surprised and frustrated residents who stopped to vote on their way to work or between errands only to be redirected elsewhere — an outcome predicted by county officials and voting rights activists who feared the GOP’s arrangement would disenfranchise voters.
Estelle Voisin arrived at University Park United Methodist Church before work at 8:30 a.m. where navigators deployed by the county to assist amid the confusion looked up her registration on an iPad and directed her to a school 10 minutes away.
“They’re making it more difficult for us,” said Voisin, a Democrat. “They’re eroding every single right that makes America, America and one of those is voting.”
Shannon Fitzgerald, a navigator at the church, said she had to redirect 48 people to different polling sites within just the first two hours of polls being open. Fitzgerald said one was a woman who stopped to cast a ballot on her way to the airport but had to give up her vote because she didn’t have time to make a second detour before her flight.
By 9:30 a.m. at Oak Lawn Branch Library, more voters were redirected to other polls than were able to cast a ballot on site, said David Fisher, the site’s Democratic election judge. In that time Fisher said 69 people had voted but workers rerouted more than 70 to other places.
“They’re confused like, well I voted here in the past,” Fisher said.
One of those was Keith Idell, 77, a Republican who is used to voting at the Oak Lawn library but was instructed by navigators in green shirts that he had to head 1 mile away to Esperanza Medrano Elementary School.
At first, Idell said he thought: “Why do I have to travel around the city just to find someplace else to vote, screw it.” But Idell said he values voting as a way to “get the right people representing us in government,” so the retiree headed to the elementary school to try again.
More than 200 Republican precinct chairs voted in September to hold separate primaries this year. Republican Party chair Allen West declined to comment Tuesday on confusion unfolding on Election Day. He previously said precinct-based voting “reduces the opportunity for fraudulent activity,” although research shows voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the U.S.
Democratic Party Chair Kardal Coleman confirmed hundreds of voters had been affected by the change by Tuesday afternoon, an outcome he tried to avoid by pushing for a joint primary.
But state law only allows countywide voting on Election Day if both parties agree, leaving all voters affected by the Republicans’ decision.
He worried the problem will only worsen later in the day when voters are fighting with rush hour traffic after work to make it to the correct polling location.
“This is not just disenfranchising Democratic voters, this is disenfranchising everyone and this is a problem that we didn’t need,” Coleman said. “Now we’re seeing chaos ensue on Election Day.
Residents should confirm their polling place before heading out to vote by using the Dallas County Elections Department’s interactive tool or calling 469-627-8683.
The separate primaries also require different check-in tables, workers and voting machines for each party within shared locations. Red and blue arrows direct voters to opposite sides of the room inside the polls, meaning voters accustomed to casting a ballot with privacy have to publicly announce their affiliation.
The Commissioners Court in January allocated $1 million on a voter outreach campaign to push home mailers and advertisements alerting residents to the changes.
But as of midday, the county was seeing 50% to 90% of the people arriving at locations that traditionally have the highest turnout as universal voting centers being redirected to their precincts, said County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman.
Sommerman said many voters can only carve out small amounts of time in their day to cast a ballot, so he feared having to reroute them to other locations will result in suppressing the vote.
“If the goal of the Republican Party was to make voting more difficult, they have succeeded this day,” said Sommerman, a Democrat.
A little before 8 a.m., Glenda Amaya was in the Irving City Hall parking lot, getting back into her pickup to head to her third polling place of the morning. Amaya, 41, started at an Irving fire station, where a poll worker redirected her to another site on Story Road.
“But I was stubborn. I was like, ‘No, I can go to City Hall and go vote,’” she said. “But no, I can’t.”
The trips to two extra voting sites added about half an hour’s delay to her morning plans, Amaya said. But still, she was determined to cast a ballot.
“I feel like something’s got to change,” she said. “I know three, four years ago wasn’t great, but this is not great, either.”
At Samuell Grand Recreation Center in East Dallas, Gayla McGinnis, 66, appeared flustered as she exited the building and hurried back to her car around 9:30 a.m..
“This is where I vote every time,” she said, after being told inside that she was in the wrong place.
She was supposed to be at work but now had to head back toward home to vote. It had taken some time for poll workers to discern her correct voting location: Bayles Elementary School, a 10-minute drive from the recreation center.
The same thing happened to Myra Gee, 33. She had been hoping to be “in and out” to vote. Now she also had to commute to Bayles Elementary to cast her ballot.
Gee felt lucky that her remote job is flexible enough to give her that extra time. She knows that’s not the case for everyone.
“I can imagine for other voters who maybe don’t have that privilege, it can certainly be a challenge — or just discourage people in general,” Gee said. “They say, ‘Uh, I made it all the way over here. Now I have to go somewhere else. Just forget it.’”
_____
(Staff writers Silas Allen and Lauren Caruba contributed to this report.)
_____
©2026 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.