The Dallas County Commissioners have approved modifications to Dallas County’s Polling Place Program. The court opted to authorize these modifications during its latest meeting on April 4.
These modifications are enacted ahead of the upcoming May 6 joint election. Texas lawmakers have already begun addressing voting proceedings amid concerns of integrity from previous elections, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Governor Greg Abbott announced an investigation into the subject after some voting areas reportedly did not receive a sufficient amount of ballots.
These new modifications consist of removing three locations and adding five in anticipation of a “low turnout election, for a total of 367 vote centers,” according to official documents.
The list of removed locations is as follows:
- W. Bushman Elementary School
- First Baptist Church-Seagoville
- Jack E. Singley Academy
The list of new locations replacing these is as follows:
- Campbell Green Recreation Center
- Seagoville Elementary School
- University of North Texas-Dallas
- Frank Crowley Courts Building
- David G. Burnett Elementary School
Official documents reveal that the institution of these two additional locations will individually cost about $7,772.
Dallas County officials claim that these modifications will allow for better efficiency in elections going forward.
A study published on Sage Journals in 2019 revealed that over a dozen states centralize in core county locations to “increase voter accessibility. Researchers endeavored to test this notion by studying elections in Texas.
Researchers observed that voting centers not only produce accessibility for voters but also yield cost saving for their counties. However, these researchers observed that this effect might not be universal and may depend on the type of election.
“The results from this article show that lower turnout elections (constitutional) benefit from vote centers more than larger turnout elections (midterm/gubernatorial, presidential),” the study’s authors noted.
