Dallas County Judge Staci Williams has signed an order to keep polls open until 9 p.m. today — two hours longer than the 7 p.m. closing time.
That's after hundreds of Dallas County voters arrived at polling locations where they thought they could vote on primary election day, March 3.
The order, signed at about 5:30 p.m., shows that Kardal Coleman, Dallas County Democratic Party chair, filed an emergency petition for voting hours to be extended.
Williams agreed.
"…The court after reviewing the petition find that there has been confusion as to where to voters[sic] were entitled to cast their ballot on election day, and voter confusion was so severe that the Dallas County Election Department website crashed…"
County election department "navigators" informed between 50 and 100 percent of hopeful voters who showed up at some voting locations that they could not cast ballots because they were at the wrong location.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett earlier Tuesday released statement suggesting polling hours stay open as a solution to mass voter confusion in Dallas and Williamson counties, where Republicans chose to hold separate, precinct-based primary voting.
"This effort to suppress the vote, to confuse and inconvenience voters is having its intended effect as people are being turned away from the polls," Crockett's statement reads.
Dallas County Commissioner Andy Sommerman said the number of voters who were redirected to their correct, precinct-designated voting location was more likely in the thousands.
"The navigators themselves are keeping records, they're doing counts," he said. "They don't have to. It's not part of the rules, and nor were they told to do it. But they thought it was important to keep track, and so they have been."
By 1 p.m., nearly 50,000 votes had been counted.
Sommerman said the county election navigators reported 60 percent of people who showed up to vote at Northway Christian Church were turned away because they were at the wrong polling place. At Royal Lane Baptist Church it was 50 percent. The numbers were similar at Fretz Park Library, he said.
"I have counted five of those," he said. "That's a thousand, that is five and we have hundreds of voting locations and so you will be at thousands by end of day, I have no doubt about it."
The county was in charge of managing and operating early voting countywide locations, which allowed Democrats and Republicans to vote at any location throughout the county.
The Dallas County Republican Party chose to hold separate primary elections after it abandoned its effort to hand-count all primary election day ballots.
That decision meant the Democratic and Republican parties would contract with public and private locations to host Election Day polling places.
Williams presides over the 101st Civil District Court.
Communities reporter Priscilla Rice and breaking news reporter Dylan Duke contributed to this report.
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