Record turnout in 2026 Texas primaries, several runoff races set for May

It remained unclear Wednesday whether ballots cast during extended polling place hours in Texas' primary will be counted in two counties that saw mass confusion over voting locations.

Such votes have been set aside in Dallas County after the Texas Supreme Court stepped in Tuesday night, staying a lower court's ruling. As of Wednesday afternoon, county election officials were still waiting for direction on whether the ballots should be included in vote totals.

The same issue affected Williamson County, north of Austin, which had hours extended at two polling places and has since had the last-minute ballots set aside.

But for Democrats in deeply blue Dallas County, the state's second-most populous, they say their hopes are dwindling. Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said the Supreme Court's action was expected because it's hard to get poll hours extended under Texas law.

"In a lot of ways, nobody was surprised by the writ from the Supreme Court last night," Burke said. She added it's likely the late ballots won't be counted.

It is unclear exactly how many ballots were cast during the extended hours. According to data on the Dallas County Elections Department's website, 2,316 in-person "provisional" ballots were rejected or pending, a number that includes any ballots flagged for a variety of issues as well as those the high court ordered to be segregated. A total of nearly 280,000 people voted in the county's election, based on unofficial figures from the department.

Of greater concern, Burke said, was the chaos unleashed by the precinct-only voting system that Dallas County was forced to use because of a change by local Republicans, who refused to use a system that allowed voters to cast a ballot anywhere in the county, as they had done since 2019. Voters instead could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct. Under state law, Democrats had to use the same method.

Confused and frustrated, some voters were turned away from polling places on Tuesday and directed to other locations.

"There is a case to be made, and we can document it, there were people who were disenfranchised," Burke said.

She said she will attempt to push the legislature to repeal the 2006 law that requires both parties to hold a joint primary to prevent this sort of chaos: "If one party wants to wreck their primary, they should be able to do that but they should not be able to wreck someone else's."

In Dallas County, a judge ordered polls to remain open for two hours past the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time, citing "voter confusion so severe" that it caused the website of the county election office to crash. The judge was acting on a petition filed by the local Democratic Party in a heavily left-leaning county. The extension applied only to Democratic voting precincts.

There was initial concern that it could affect the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate because Dallas is the home base of Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, but she later conceded to James Talarico, a state lawmaker.

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who advanced to a runoff Tuesday against Sen. John Cornyn for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, challenged the lower court's ruling. Shortly after, the state Supreme Court stayed both decisions in Dallas and Williamson counties. Its brief orders said ballots cast by voters in both counties who were not in line by the 7 p.m. scheduled close of polls should be separated.

Emily French, the policy director for Common Cause Texas, a voting advocacy group, said it is standard for ballots that are cast during extended poll hours to be set aside. In El Paso, for example, voting was extended for an hour on Tuesday after problems with voter check-in systems earlier in the day. French said she expects them to ultimately be tallied if no one is contesting the extension.

Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, said the organization is continuing "to monitor this situation and will be weighing all options to ensure every Texan is able to have their vote counted."

The first round of primary elections is showing how this year's midterms will be taking place on shifting political ground for incumbents.

That was particularly true in Texas - the first state to redraw its congressional districts last year - where incumbent members of Congress have been pushed to runoffs and another has been scuttled from the House altogether.

Democratic Rep. Al Green, an outspoken liberal who has twice been ejected from President Donald Trump's State of the Union addresses for protesting, and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee will compete in the May 26 runoff for a Houston-area district.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican and former Navy SEAL with an independent streak, faced attacks from the party's hard right that he was not in lockstep with Trump, and was the state's only House Republican not to win the president's endorsement. He lost to Steve Toth, a Republican state lawmaker who received late backing from Sen. Ted Cruz.

Jim Wright, the Republican incumbent for the Railroad Commission seat, did not secure at least half the vote and will face Bo French in a runoff next month.

And John Cornyn and Ken Paxton are waiting for President Trump's endorsement after Cornyn failed to earn his primary nomination.

See more about where things stand after yesterday's primaries: Early primaries show Texas and Houston-area incumbents are on shaky ground in midterms

The 2026 Texas primary election saw record-breaking turnout, according to state officials.

In a post on social media, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said that this year's primary turnout was the highest in the history of the state, with 4.29 million votes cast.

According to officials, the previous turnout record was set in 2008, when presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton faced off for the Democratic nomination. That election saw about 4 million people cast ballots, 3 million of which were on the Democratic side.