Objection: What Happened in Dallas County Was Not a Glitch

What happened in Dallas County tonight should scare the hell out of you.

If you’re new here, I’m Eliza Orlins, career public defender for 15 years in Manhattan.

Here’s the story, and I need you to follow the chain of events carefully, because the order matters.

They Changed the Rules

Dallas County has used countywide vote centers since 2019. That means you could vote at any location in the county—whatever was closest to your job, your kid’s school, your house. It worked. Voters understood it.

Then the Dallas County Republican Party, led by Chair Allen West, decided to blow that up. They originally wanted to hand-count all primary ballots—driven by the same conspiracy theories about voting machines that have been floating around since 2020. They couldn’t pull it off because they didn’t have the money or the people. But under Texas law, the decision to split into precinct-based voting had already been made. And once one party makes that call, the other party has to follow.

So Dallas County Democrats—the majority party in the county—were forced into a system nobody had used in years. Voters had to go to their specific assigned precinct. Not the location down the street. Not the one they’ve been going to for the last seven years. Their assigned precinct, at a location designated by their party.

And Williamson County, just north of Austin, did the same thing.

The Chaos Was Predictable—and Predicted

The Dallas County Elections Department tried. They sent mailers, text messages, ran social media ads, and put up streaming ads. They stationed “election navigators” at 75 polling locations to redirect confused voters. The Democratic Party chair, Kardal Coleman, said they ran a full outreach campaign.

It didn’t matter.

By Tuesday afternoon, between 50 and 100 percent of voters arriving at some locations were being told they were in the wrong place. The Texas Democratic Party said around a third of all voters were having problems. The state’s website was giving people inaccurate locations. Voters were showing up to what they thought was a Democratic polling site in Irving, only to find out it was a Republican location, and then getting sent 20 minutes away to Farmers Branch.

One woman—Veronica Anderson, 66 years old—walked two and a half miles to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center to vote. She was told she was at the wrong place and would need to go to a precinct she’d never even heard of. She stood outside trying to figure out what to do.

That’s who we’re talking about when we talk about voter suppression. Real people. People who walked miles to exercise a right that’s supposed to be protected.

A Judge Did What Judges Are Supposed to Do

Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Kardal Coleman filed an emergency petition. A district court judge ordered the polls to stay open until 9pm so voters who’d been sent to the wrong locations—through no fault of their own—could still cast their ballots. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins confirmed the extension.

This is how the system is supposed to work. A problem occurs, people are harmed, a court steps in with a remedy.

Then Ken Paxton Showed Up

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an emergency motion with the Texas Supreme Court to block the judge’s order. His argument? The lower court judge didn’t give his office the required notice before issuing the extension.

Seriously. Paxton didn’t argue that voters weren’t harmed. He didn’t argue that the state’s website hadn’t sent people to wrong locations. He didn’t argue that the switch to precinct voting hadn’t caused mass confusion. He argued paperwork.

And the Texas Supreme Court—which, let’s be clear, is an all-Republican court—issued a temporary stay. They blocked the extension and ordered Dallas County to separate out all votes cast by people who weren’t in line by 7pm.

Those ballots are now in legal limbo. The court’s order doesn’t say what happens to them. It just says separate them.

This Was the Point

I need you to think about why you’d do this in a Democratic primary.

You don’t suppress votes in a primary to win the primary. Republicans aren’t on the Democratic ballot. Ken Paxton isn’t losing anything if more Democrats vote tonight.

But here’s what you do gain: you weaken whoever comes out of it. You damage the eventual nominee. You shape the field. You get a test run for your playbook.

Tonight, Dallas County had a hotly contested Democratic U.S. Senate primary between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico. That race will determine who Democrats put up against the Republican nominee in November—in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat since 1988 but keep getting closer.

The Republican Party created the confusion by forcing a system change nobody needed. The state’s own website gave voters bad information. A judge tried to fix it. And the attorney general—who, by the way, is running for Senate himself in the Republican primary—ran to the state supreme court to make sure the fix didn’t stick.

The government created the problem. A court ordered a remedy. The AG killed the remedy.

And now there are ballots sitting in a pile, separated, waiting for someone to decide if they count.

This Is March. Imagine November.

This was a primary. A primary with relatively manageable logistics compared to what’s coming in the general election.

If they’re willing to force a voting system change, create mass confusion, and then rush to court to block the fix—in March—what do you think November looks like?

Dallas County is the second-largest county in Texas. It’s overwhelmingly Democratic. It’s exactly the kind of place where voter suppression has the biggest payoff.

Write it down. March 3, 2026. They just showed you their whole playbook.

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If this kind of reporting matters to you, subscribe to Objection: Everything and share this piece. And if you’re in Texas, check your registration and your polling location before November. Don’t let them catch you off guard twice.

UPDATE (10:45pm CT): Since this piece was published, the Texas Supreme Court has fully struck down the judge’s order extending voting hours. All polling locations are closed. Only voters in line by 7pm were allowed to cast ballots. The separated ballots remain in limbo.

As of this update, Talarico leads Crockett 52-47 with about 60% of all votes counted—but Dallas County, Crockett’s home base, is still largely outstanding. Crockett told her supporters tonight that “people have been disenfranchised” and that she doesn’t expect full results until Wednesday.

Those separated Dallas County ballots still don’t have a final ruling. We don’t know if they’ll count. And we don’t know what this race looks like once Dallas reports in full.

This is what voter suppression looks like when it works.