Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson calls Election Day issues at nine voting sites ‘disturbing.’ City refuses to pay county $1.5 million for runoffs
Mayor Eric Johnson said that they’ll never know how many people failed to vote on Election Day.
Signs mark an official polling location outside the George Allen Courts building in Downtown Dallas, during the first day of early voting, on Monday, April 19, 2021.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)
7:49 PM on May 12, 2021 CDT
Almost two weeks after Dallas voters were turned away from several polling sites that didn’t open for hours most in South Dallas the city’s elected leaders refused to commit paying nearly $1.5 million for the county to oversee the June 5 runoff elections.
South Dallas struggles to get out the vote. It can’t afford problems at polling places.
Getting voters to show up at the polls for local races is a feat every time, and Dallas’ record is embarrassingly bad compared to other major cities in the country. Our typical voter turnout for municipal elections is about 10% or less. Now turn to Nashville, Tenn., where 24% of registered voters elected the Metro Council in 2019, or Chicago, where 35% of voters cast ballots in the municipal general election that same year.
Still, a turnout of 10.7% of Dallas’ registered electorate for the City Council races this spring a depressing statistic counts as a small victory given that the last council member-only elections drew just 7.6% of registered voters in the city.
Dallas County elections official promises full review after problems closed some polling places for hours Saturday
Six sites had issues with voting, including three in an area where there was a hotly contested race for the District 7 City Council seat.
After volunteers at one of the busiest polling places in South Dallas had to turn voters away for nearly four hours Saturday when voting machines stopped working, Dallas County’s top elections official is vowing to review what happened.
The issues occurred during municipal elections when 14 seats for the Dallas City Council were on the ballot, including a hotly contested race in District 7, which is in South Dallas.