Dallas Co. tried Denton's "best of all worlds" voting system...chaos ensued

Despite the fact that Denton County's outmoded Election Day voting system disadvantaged more Republican voters than Democrats on Election Day, November 2025, the Dallas County GOP insisted on trying it anyway on primary Election Day May 3.

(Dallas is one of 100 Texas counties that years ago ditched the voting rule that forced voters to cast Election Day ballots only in their home precinct while during Early Voting they could cast their ballot anywhere in the county.)

Dallas had not had precinct-based voting on Election Day for six years ... until the county's GOP leaders -- in the name of "election security" -- decided to exercise their option to force it on voters on primary Election Day on March 3. The change forced the county to spend more than $1 million extra dollars to try to inform voters about the switch from countywide voting for Election Day only.

It was a mess anyway. Thousands of Dallas County voters of both parties got shuffled all over the county all day long. A last-minute attempt to give Democratic voters more time to find polling locations was blocked in court.

(Afterwards, the Dallas GOP chair decided to go back to countywide voting for the primary runoff election in June because of “increased risk and voter confusion." But he's not ruling out that they will try disastrous precinct-based voting again on primary Election Day 2028.)

Meanwhile, on primary Election Day in Denton County, record turnout meant thousands of voters of both parties here also suffered from voting location confusion. But for us, that's just par for the course.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Denton's GOP party chair still contends that this is a great way to do elections. She says publicly that it's the "best of all worlds" voting system. And our all-GOP county commission is too afraid of the local party leadership to make a common-sense decision to do what leaders in 100 other counties with nearly 90% of Texas voters have already done: switch to countywide Election Day voting

Two current commission members -- Judge Andy Eads and Commissioner Kevin Falconer -- will be on the ballot in November. (Commissioner Dianne Edmondson already lost out in the GOP primary. )

Democrats will be on the ballot for all three seats.