A Dallas County judge ordered polling locations to extend voting by two hours on Tuesday evening, after Democrats complained that hundreds of voters had been flummoxed by a recent Election Day rule change and had been turned away from polling places.
The judge found that there had been “mass confusion” over where voters were supposed to cast their ballots, a bewilderment “so severe” that they crashed the county election website looking for answers.
Democrats on Tuesday afternoon had been raising concerns about a rule change in Dallas and Williamson Counties made weeks ago, arguing that it was confusing voters and leading to lower-than-expected in-person turnout as people were turned away from polling places.
In the past, Democrats and Republicans in both counties had agreed to allow voters to cast their ballots at any of the counties’ vote centers on Election Day. But this year, the local Republican Party in both counties opted out of the agreement, requiring voters in both primaries to visit specific assigned precincts instead.
Democrats and county election officials spent weeks advertising the Election Day rule change and urging people to vote early instead.
Nick Solorzano, a spokesman for the Dallas County Elections Department, confirmed that “quite a few people” had been redirected on Tuesday, though he did not have an official estimate of how many.
“We anticipated it was going to happen,” Mr. Solorzano said. Connie Odom, a spokeswoman for the Williamson County elections office, said her county was experiencing the same issue but did not offer a sense of how widespread it was.
Kardal Coleman, the chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, who petitioned the court for the extension, said more than 1,000 Democrats in the Dallas area had been rerouted after showing up at the wrong location so far on Tuesday afternoon.
“This whole experiment is one that’s unnecessary, and it was avoidable,” Mr. Coleman said.
Representative Jasmine Crockett, locked in a tight Democratic primary race for Senate with James Talarico, a state representative, and counting on crucial votes in her base of Dallas, also criticized the situation on Tuesday afternoon, blaming Republicans. Other Democrats made similar comments.
“It is so sad that the Republicans don’t know how to win fair and square,” Ms. Crockett told reporters outside a public library in Dallas. Mr. Talarico’s campaign had called for an extension of polling hours in both Dallas and Williamson Counties.
Spokespeople for the Texas Republican Party, the Dallas County Republican Party and the Williamson County Republican Party did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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