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Down at this task is the question of Dallas County.

Carswoman Jasmine Crocket represents a district in Dallas. Dallas County has had problems with the administration of their election today. We've been explaining that over the course of the night. I'm going to go right now to Evan Smith, who's the host of Overheard with Evan Smith on Austin PBS.

He's a veteran observer of Texas politics. He's got 30 years experience doing that. And Evan, I'd like you to explain to us again what had happened earlier today in Dallas County. Why things have been chaotic there?

And now this new reporting about a judge's order about the extension of voting there. Right. So as we talked about earlier, Rachel, the Republican Party in Dallas County decided they did not want to have county-wide elections. They wanted to make people go to their assigned polling place locally.

And if the Republican say you can't have county-wide, then the Democrats can't have county-wide. So Democratic voters showed up thinking they were going to be able to vote at the places around the county day and voted, and they returned away. And there was a big push to try to extend voting in Dallas County as a result of that to give those people an opportunity to vote after all.

A Dallas judge ordered the polls open until nine. Well, attorney general Ken Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court within the last couple of hours to overturn the Dallas judges ruling. And according to reporting from my former colleague, Eleanor Clibinoff of Texas Tribune, the Texas Supreme Court has just temporarily blocked that judges order to keep the polls

open until nine ordering the county to separate out the votes from people who were not in line at seven o'clock. This throws a monkey wrench into the vote-count in Dallas County. Whether those votes are going to count or not, we have no idea what's going to happen. It's a temporary ruling.

But goodness, this is a mess, Rachel. It was already a mess. It's more of a mess now. This is a pause of the vote extension in Dallas County. Are people being stopped from voting right now?

“What I know is that the county is being told, you have to take the votes that were cast”

in the last two hours. It's coming up upon that nine o'clock hour central here in Texas right now. You have to take the votes that were cast by people who were not in line at seven o'clock. We wish them to decide and the fate and the status of those votes is now unknown. And of course if you're Jasmine Croft, you're thinking this is terrible for you because

this is the county where you're going to hopefully roar back into contention on this race. And this is, as you said, it was a Dallas judge who ordered the extension of voting in Dallas County. And then it was US Senate candidate and sitting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxon, who

asked for an individual state Supreme Court judge to weigh in and essentially overturned that other judges ruling. Ask the Supreme Court of Texas if they would come in and temporarily block that Dallas judges order and the Supreme Court came back and said, yes, we temporarily block it. Is it, do we know is it multiple judges on the sexes Supreme Court or is it one judges

ruling? I mean, I would have to, I don't know whether it was one judge who were multiple, but

but that's something we'll determine here in the course of the report.

Yeah, this is crazy stuff. Yeah. Evan Smith, keep talking to your sources and do what you can to help us understand this. I think we'll be coming back to you. I can tell you, for all the lawyers who are listening to you right now, who are going down

to your stand when I'm about to tell you, this is from the Supreme Court of Texas, orders pronounced. A stay is issued in the following petition for rid of men, Davis, in the state of Texas from Dallas County. The district court's order granting emergency petition to extend voting hours issued today

in cause number. Um, styled Cardell Coleman in his capacity as Dallas County Democratic Party chair versus Paul Adams and his official capacity as Dallas County elections administrator in the 162nd district court Dallas County Texas is state, meaning the earlier ruling that was in place that extended Dallas County voting voting.

That order is state and then here's the money quote, voting should occur only as permitted by Texas election code section 41 at dash 032 votes cast by voters who were not in line to vote at seven PM local time should be separated. Note, the petition for rid of men, Davis remains pending before this court. Well, I mean, at one level, it's pretty insane to have a candidate who's on the ballot

being the litigant who gets to decide, I mean, he, you know, he's the state attorney general but getting to wait to weigh in. I, you know, I don't know if there's a particular valence to those, uh, those votes at that hour for him.

“I think it's mostly about the Democratic primary.”

It also feels a little bit to me like if the calculation of the Republican establishment is a crock it's an easier candidate to beat that this goes against that but like he's just doing it for love of the game. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like he's just super committed to making it hard for people to vote as just a deeply held view and you know what I mean? And making it hard to vote in Dallas. Yes. Right.

And a big purple slash red that you take the cities that are very blue and you say those places have terrible voting, look what a mess. And so there's not like 3D chess here just seems like I don't like the fact that they extend and voting ours deserves confusion. I want them to take that back.

But Chris, the three-dimensional chess is tonight isn't that important. It's November. So as soon as they're starting to cause chaos and just just now things are messy, things are messy when they're disastrous in November, it's like, well, we saw this come. Yeah.

Yeah.

“And that's an important thing to keep in mind, right?”

I mean, also this idea that you're going to segregate out these ballots based on who's online that's ever blocked. Yeah. And I generally just want to take a step back because we can get the weeds here. There is no reason to think that anyone that there's any illegitimate or fake votes in the

entire pool. Yeah. There's no reason to think any of that. No voter did anything wrong. No one did anything wrong.

No one did anything wrong. There was confusion.

You should always default to what will allow the most amount of actual legitimate voters to

cast votes in an election. Again, whoever it is, whether that would benefit or Republican candidate or Democrat candidate, or the candidate you want or the candidate you don't, just as a general principle. But one of the things that's crazy about the world we live in, it is increasingly going to be the case that they're going to be places in which lower voter turnout would probably

help Democrats and Republicans.

“And it's still the case that as a matter of principle, you should intervene on behalf of the”

maximal amount of voters being able to do this even hurt voter turnout in the fact that if these people are standing in line waiting to vote, at some point, a lot of them just say forget about it. Yeah. I got to go home.

I got to feed my kids in there. I got to feed the cat. And it's not worth it. They do. But I would bet that's a smaller percentage of the people standing in line.

Number one. Number two, again, Republicans using the the Boney is part of their head right now in looking at this are not understanding what they're doing. They're setting up Texas to flip in November because they are systematically pissing off the voters there at the end of the day.

Well, as we've already indicated tonight, there are voters who are moving out of the Republican column to vote in the Democratic primary because they do not like what the Republicans are doing. There are more Republicans who are voting tonight in the Republican column who are looking at this.

Just saying, well, why are you doing first off, what does this have to do with the Republican

primary? It's not as as in fact of impact can paksed it, right? There is no impact on your point, Chris, this is a maximalist impact that they can bring to bear on what they want to label as corruption to your point. It sets up the argument in the narrative that they want to put in place this November

across the country. Yes. When that confusion sets in, when voters are removed and don't know, and they show it the wrong polling place, see, we told you there was corruption shut it down.

The narrative from Trump and the Republicans, from Trump in particular, from the Trump

movement, is you can't trust votes that come from Democratic strongholds. Yes. So you can't trust votes from cities. You can't trust votes from places that have lots of people of color. So they're trying to make, I mean, it makes sense to fit the political narrative, to

try to make the Dallas votes, and I'm sure they hope the Houston votes, or any votes, any other votes that fit that narrative seem as unknowable as possible, so as to create a pretext for being able to exclude them from the totals from that state. And if we go upstream, causally, the whole reason we're here, right, is because the Dallas County GOP refused to co-sign a memorandum of understanding to allow County wide voting

on, they had a demand for paper ballots, which again, like, has nothing to do with anything.

“There's no reason to think that they're better, right?”

That's a Donald Trump obsession, that's an election-denier obsession, like the whole, the whole causal chain that created the confusion that led to the necessity of opening the election earlier was the Republican County party and doing this. And to that point, because it's really important to make that logistical point about what we're on here.

So now we've got this order from the Supreme Court of Texas, that says what's the remedy here? Well, we've paused the extension of voting hours, and votes cast by voters who were not in line to vote at 7 p.m. local time should be separated. But is that feasible to do at one big county voting location in Dallas County?

Probably not. Is it feasible to do at every individual precinct voting location in Dallas County? Because there is no Central Dallas County voting location? Absolutely not. We're talking about all of those locations, all needing to do this arcane, if not impossible.

And what's important about what you just said is that I can assure you, I can assure you that election officials were not standing outside. Once they got the clearance to keep the polls open, right? They knew what, like Jacob was there at that point out, he was with the last person who was identified in the line at the appointed hour.

They didn't do that at the original polling time because they got the clearance to extend it. You don't know who's on the line? It is Markham with a chalk line. Thank you.

“But that's why this would have been so bonehead.”

But their goal isn't that which is noble, their goal is an endless morass obligation. So that goal isn't to actually know who the person was. That was the last person online at 659. You know, I don't know what, I want to know what the Jasmine Crocket campaign thinks of what has just happened in Dallas County.

Our colleague Eugene Daniels has just spoken to the Jasmine Crocket campaign. Eugene, what are they telling you? You know, I've talked to a couple of officials in there and there is, as you can imagine,

an intense frustration with what just happened, they felt like they were finally going

to get some answers out of Dallas County. They're talking to the lawyers and figuring out how to fight back was the language that both of those folks used when we spoke. What fight back looked like were not sure. I also talked to the Telugu campaign, what folks over there, and they are supportive of

whatever ends up of voters voting, right? They are not, one person said to me, uh, it's late night. So I feel like this is okay, Paxton sucks. That's bad. All voters should be able to vote.

And I think we're going to hear from a lot of the Democrats in Texas, but you're going to hear from Telugu and Jasmine Crocket, is that this is the shenanigans that they have been saying could happen in Texas. They didn't think it was going to happen so early. They thought it would happen as they got closer to November, but these are the warnings

that they've been given.

And on the first night of this big primary season that we're going to have, it's also possible

Telto signs for the shenanigans that might happen in other states and other elections as we move forward. Eugene, you said we're going to hear from Telrico and hear from Crocket on this matter. Do you expect that we actually might see the candidates behind microphones and in front of cameras on this matter anytime soon?

I think that's probably more likely with Jasmine Crocket. I think Telrico might kind of let it play out the team.

“Someone told me the team is still trying to figure out what the best way to operate and”

this is. They haven't done this kind of a dealt with this kind of thing before. I think it's more likely Jasmine Crocket gets out front because this will impact her. We've been saying all night that Dallas is where her biggest numbers are going to come from. If she is going to win, she's going to have to over-perform in Dallas and so it is incumbent

upon her and her team to get out of front and say what we know her team is saying to me right now on background. Yeah. And again, let's just bottom line this here that this is the chaos that was created in Dallas County was created because the Dallas County Republican party refused to do what

they have done in previous election years and what almost every other county in the state has done, which is allow for everybody voting in that county to vote anywhere in that county, which makes for very simple election administration compared to what they've ended

Things that something that hadn't been done in previous elections in that county and that

people didn't know to expect it created a lot of confusion and that is what brought about that judicial order that extended voting in Dallas. Again, that extension has been paused after a request to the Texas Supreme Court from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. This is still ongoing at this point.

Can we go to you right now, just in terms of talking about the stakes right now, what

“we're seeing in terms of the statewide race in Texas?”

Nicole talked about endless morass of litigation that could be Ken Paxton's tagline. That's actually what he does. In Texas, we got 48% of the vote. The gap is staying about the same. Talleriko has 53% to Jasmine Crocket's 45% and again, we're waiting to see what happens in the Jasmine Crocket's stronghold of Dallas.

We, by the way, just have results in the first results from El Paso, 59% of the vote is in.

And Talleriko is winning that 62 to 35 for Jasmine Crocket. The lead in Houston Harris County is shrinking for Harris. It's 53 and a half to 45. But take a look at this. I want to just break out. See, there's nothing here in Election Day vote. This is all early voted. 96% early in in person. I'm now going through the state and I'm looking at places like that, bear County, which is

San Antonio. Take a look at that. Same thing. 95%.

“There's no early vote coming in in a lot of these places, not just Dallas. Obviously, we know”

Williamson County doesn't have that. We don't have, I'm sorry. We don't have Election Day vote in a lot of these places. So this is a really big deal. What's just happened in Dallas County, because an overwhelming number that we're, if we're looking at the whole state in 48%, the rest is, is today vote. And we, we are not counting that in a lot of places, including some of these highly populated areas like Dallas. So this is the, the problem we have.

I want to show you one other thing. By the way, I want to go to the House Primary, just outside of Houston. I want to show you an interesting story is right here. Test, Texas 2, 58% of the vote in Dan Crenshaw is, is, is, is, Steve, 2, is the, is that 57% Dan Crenshaw, the incumbent is only at 39%. Again, it's 58% of the vote. It, it, we're not able to call this, but this is interesting to your point, Rachel, that you made earlier,

that tonight is proving to be a difficult night for a lot of incumbents. Yeah. And it may be for yet more of them as we start to get more results in across Texas and throughout every place that's facing primaries tonight. Let me just ask the controller right now. Do we have Jacob Soberoff available to us right now? All right, let's just go to Jacob right now. He's actually, right now, at James Telerico's election watch party. Jacob, what are you hearing from the

campaign? What are you hearing from people who have turned out there to support Telerico as the results come in? Rachel, they are feeling very, very good here at Telerico headquarters and I've predicted about 30 seconds you're going to hear a massive cheer because they are watching us and it's on a slight delay. But they have been glued to every minute of every update that is coming in. They were watching Alley Belchys reports just in the last couple of minutes. What I will say is

though the issues around what's happening in Dallas County and I have asked the campaign for a comment about what they are going to do and what they are going to do and what they are going to do. We have a very good at the Telerico campaign as come to respond, but I will also say we have been watching very closely until results coming here out of Travis County as well here in the Austin area and as we've watched Alley do the reporting over the course of the last several hours.

As we might have anticipated, when I met Doug Rekko on the line at UT Austin earlier this evening, the chairman of this Travis County Democratic Party, we didn't talk about this. I didn't

know about that the results were going to be delayed. But here's what he told me. I checked in

about these results being delayed. He said, yes they are delayed. The absentee results, the early one results at Tuesday are delayed coming out of Travis County because the Republican Party here has to end in the primary election contract. It isn't new, but it's the reason why the votes are delayed. The trade-off is that they were able to negotiate county-wide vote centers,

“like we have been talking about all night and that's why what's happening here is not what's”

happening in Dallas or Williamson County where you can only vote in the pre-sings. But the results are trickling in here, slower than they normally would because of the agreement between the Democratic and Republican Party. I will say though that everyone here at the Tallarico headquarters is feeling very optimistic this evening. We expect it to speak or expect it to speak not long after the Dallas County results were in. That has now been thrown into question because of the status of the

bone count and the Texas Supreme Court's decision. But all in all Rachel, I can tell you that this is an enthusiastic route, a very eager route to see what's going to happen and they are watching us on MS now here at Tallarico headquarters. James Jacob, I'm a little bit worried that you're going to be mobbed in just a moment. All it's going to be left is a little tough to fairing your glasses from the way that that room sounds right now. I will tell you, I'll give you a reporting assignment right

move from the Supreme Court of Texas, pausing the extension on the voting in Dallas County,

we do have some reaction from the Jasmine Crocket campaign that we got to our friend Eugene Daniels. If you can get anything from the Tallarico side in terms of their reaction, what happened with the Texas Supreme Court, we're all ears. We just love to hear it. Good luck, my friend. Thank you. Let me just give you a little look at what we're looking at here. Rachel, this is what they're looking at. I'm going to try to sneak back here and see if I can find them. See if I can find someone

from the campaign. If you let us know the reaction of what's happening at the Dallas County, come back to a little bit. All right, Jacob. Jacob, thank you very much, guys. Well, we talked earlier in the night about how whatever happens in the Republican side, because there are three, it's likely to not be known

tonight and to go to a runoff. You know, benefits if the Democratic side is sort of tied up in litigation

and certainly, whomever is interested in that person not having the night or the head start. Yeah, I also think that if you're Ken Pax, and I'm just going to go to the dark place here, and the Republicans, what you want is for somebody to win the Democratic primary home for them to continue to be divided. It was quite a contentious primary. These are two stars, but it has been a contentious primary. And if James Taylor ago wins, he needs to pull in Jasmine Crocket supporters,

a large base of African American voters in Texas. There were Republicans with nothing more County. And in Dallas County, there were Republicans with nothing more than for conspiracy to float out there that things were stolen from her, that the vote didn't come across. That's not what

“has happened here, but I think that there's a darkness here that could be part of their theory.”

Yeah, if the Democrats, I was just going to say if the Democrats were really thinking strategically

right now, and thinking about small D Democrats, as well as capital D Democrats, Taloreco and Crocket would respond together. What's happening is that. And they would go out and speak. They would both go out. Taloreco would go out and speak and show and they both would. And they would act together. They would act with the state, Democratic Party Chairman, and they would make a unified front on.

But in the sense of both of these candidates, that's really hard to do. All right, both of them put it on the line, you know, ran a really hard race to say, I need to do, you know, I need to put party before self. I need to focus on it. That's hard to do, because Ken Pax and to the dark point, this is a test run. This is a test run for how can he get voter suppression operations working like Democrats tomorrow in Texas better get ready for

voter suppression hijinks from now until November. Not just Texas. Yeah, my call. I cut you off there. No, no, no, I'm just going to say to the point to the staying in the dark place for a moment.

“But sorry. But no, but no, but it's a good place to be in this context because I think the”

important narrative for the Democrats is not to get lost in the weeds of lawsuits and conspiracy theories, but to say tonight was stolen from us by the Republicans, because the Republican attorney general running in this race has to judge to intervene and take away your vote. Yeah. Yeah, that was in Jasmine. That wasn't until I recalled that was Paxton. And I think I think the narrative is there to both of your points to make it a little bit easier for them to come together, right,

which you're right, candidates when they've been, if I don't want to do that. But the more important battle is the small D point that you made, Rachel, that they need to focus on, because tonight, the vote of a lot of voters is being stolen for them after 7 p.m. Well, let's go to Dallas right now. Let's bring in our own Rosa Flores, who is out of polling location in Dallas, Texas, Rosa, I said we would be, we'd be back with you. I didn't know it would be an exactly

these circumstances arose. We're watching so much legal drama unfolding. What's your understanding

“of what's what's happening in the response and Dallas County this far?”

Where Rachel, I just kind of have the phone with Dallas County. And what they explained to me was that what this means is because the Texas Supreme Court, Rosa, I have to interrupt you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I just, we're going to come back to to that point. Jasmine, Crocket, it's just taking the stage. Let's go live to that. Pickles in, and I'm losing now, it's nothing. If we know, I don't want this thing's gone.

So, so that's my news. Is that we're not going to have elocion results tonight in my opinion, based upon what specifically it's taking place in Dallas County. Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do. And so, they specifically targeted Dallas County and I think we all know why. So, I want you to enjoy yourselves, but I won't be back tonight because

until tomorrow. So, I love you all too. Thank you so very much for being here. I love you down. I love you down, Dallas.

“Jasmine Crocket, speaking live in Dallas right now. We got to that as soon as we realized she”

was up at the podium there, but you heard the nut of what she said. She said they are not expecting to have results tonight. She said, this is what Republicans like to do. They specifically targeted Dallas County. She asked her supporters to stay and enjoy themselves, but she did not expect that there would be election results of any definitive sort tonight specifically because of what's happening in Dallas. Meanwhile, we're going to go back to Rosa Flores who is in Dallas County right after

right after this from Ali Velsheb because while Jasmine Crocket was saying that we actually did get in a bunch of vote. A lot of both. We're now up to 59% in the state and the lead

tele Rico's lead has narrowed. It's now 51.8 to 46.9 and a lot of that is because we finally

have got some votes in from Dallas and a lot of them. That vote just dumped 61%. We went from

“zero all night to 61%. Jasmine Crocket has got to lead there. It's 60 to 38. It's significant,”

but this is this is early vote. This is this is not day of vote. Obviously, the big issue right now is what that day of vote is going to be. So we're sort of stuck in a lot of places at the 60-ish point. There are some smaller counties that were easy to count and the numbers are much higher, but generally speaking, in major centers, we're in this area. Look at Travis County, which is Austin. This is 60% this is Talleriko's home. He's at 76 to Jasmine Crocket's 23. Let's go to Houston

where Jasmine Crocket was expected to do very well with two thirds of the vote in. She's her lead

is narrowing. 53.5 to 45 for Talleriko in Fort Bend, two three quarters of the vote. 77% of the vote is in 60 to 36. So again, this really is anybody's game right now. This is a jump ball. It is unclear what's going on. Clearly, Jasmine Crocket believes this will not conclude tonight as she just said and we may be believing the same thing. I want to just quickly jump over to the Senate contest of the GOP Senate contest. Again, 43% is where John Corbin, the incumbent is at Ken Paxton,

is trailing with 40%. He's behind a lot of what just happened in Dallas County for reasons that are not clear. Wesley Hunt is staying at 13%. He's been at 13% all night. I just want to go to Dallas County and show you this. This is the Republican Senate contest in Dallas County. Look how far behind Ken Paxton is. He's involved in these shenanigans in Dallas County. His vote and Wesley Hunt's vote do not add up to John Corbin's vote in Dallas County. I don't know whether that's relevant to

what why Ken Paxton went to court tonight to shut down the the votes of those who were in line after 7 PM, but it is a place where Ken Paxton is not doing well. All right. I want to go right back to Dallas County right now. Rosa Flora is standing by Rosa. I very, very rudely interrupted you while you were starting to tell us about your communications with Dallas County. I'm varies. I only do that because we had that live feed to take from Jasmine Crocket. Please start over again.

“Tell us about your communications with the county. What happened in those communications tonight?”

Yeah. So what how they expanded to me is because the Texas Supreme Court struck down the lower court ruling, which extended voting for the Democratic primary from 7 PM to 9 PM central time, all those ballots that were cast reach of between 7 PM and 9 PM. Those will be, quote, separated and kept. Now, the big question is will they be counted? And I can tell you from talking to voters who had gone to multiple polling places trying to find the right polling place. One woman who was

in tears earlier today and a woman that I literally interviewed moments before the polls closed because this Texas Supreme Court ruling came down, they were all worried about their vote counting and they were all talking about how this was, quote, voter suppression because they were really trying to vote and they just couldn't vote. Like I said before, I'm a data girl Rachel and just to give you a sense, as I mentioned earlier, here at about 5 30 PM central time

388 people had voted at this polling place and according to the election judge, again, of the Democratic Party, about 350 had been turned away. That just gives you a sense of how many people were out in Dallas County trying to figure out where to vote and trying to vote. Right. That's just remarkable. That's a remarkable snapshot of what was happening there, Rosa, but just to be clear what the county told you is that votes cast after a specific time are going to

point whether they will be counted, they'll just be somehow preserved and segregated from the

“vote that came in earlier today. You're absolutely right and I followed up with that”

Rachel because that was very curious about what that meant. Does that mean that they keep them just for now and the individual from the spokesperson from the county didn't go into specifics because of course that's a lot of legalism. She was like, I can't speak for the Democratic Party because this is a challenge that the Democratic Party is putting forth, but she did say that they will be kept, but from talking to all of the voters today, I can tell you that what they were worried about

was their vote counting, especially because they had gone through, in essence, through all these hoops to try to vote, trying to figure out, okay, wait, where do I vote? Even the website crash. Rachel, so people who were trying to figure out where can I vote, they couldn't even find out where to vote because the website crashed, so there were just so many hurdles that these voters had to go through just to cast their ballot today. Rosa Flores, for us in Dallas County, Texas,

Rosa, I know we will be back with you. Keep reporting, whatever we can learn about how this is going to be worked out, what's going to be the dispensation of those ballots, how voters can, if they can be reassured about how this has been in Minnesota Dallas County, it's all really,

“really important. Thank you, we're grateful for you being there. The last polls of the night have”

closed, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, we are watching this sort of remarkable litigation playout in Texas, in terms of votes counting, and being cast, we as yet may get full developments tonight in either side of the Texas Senate race, whether on the Republican side or on the Democratic side, it's just all happening all at once. We'll be right back. Stay with us. [Speaking in Spanish]

[Speaking in Spanish] During you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes, because no one's

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Listen now to the up first podcast from NPR.

Just coming up on 10 30 Eastern time as we are covering the first big primary night of the 2026 midterm elections. Now, at this hour, at this moment, there are only two precincts in one county in Texas. Where vote officially is still coming in, where polls are still open. It's two precincts in Williamson County, which is just north of Austin, Texas. There has been litigation tonight, a ruling from an order, excuse me, a ruling from a judge in Dallas County ordering

that in Dallas County, the vote had to stay open for longer because there had been mass confusion after the Republicans from Dallas County refused to allow, to come to an agreement, to allow people to vote, county-wide, and Dallas County people were showing up, expecting to be able to vote in Dallas County and being told they needed to go to a specific precinct location

they'd never had to go before. Because of that confusion, there was a judges order to extend

voting in Dallas County. Dallas County is huge, second largest county in the state. The attorney general of the state of Texas Republican Ken Paxton, who is a candidate for the U.S. Senate primary on the Republican side tonight, he then went to the Texas Supreme Court and secured an order from the Texas Supreme Court to stop that extension of the voting in Dallas County, which in logistical terms is a chaotic sort of thing to order because people were voting,

to separate those votes and set them aside. This is a temporary matter. The overall writ, the overall question, and still before the Texas Supreme Court, as far as we know right now at this hour, Dallas is, among other things, an important stronghold for Texas Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket, who was in a hot, hot battle with James Tolerico, a state representative in Texas, for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary there. That is where we stand right now.

Let me give you one other little wrinkle here. This is something that Ali Velshy has been noticing. We just got a little bit of specific reporting on it from Jacob Sobrough as to how this is playing out in Austin, specifically in Travis County. But we're noticing that there's one big category of vote that really just doesn't seem to be factoring into the vote, told us we are getting out of Texas almost across the board. Ali, can you explain that to us?

Oh, it's across the board, okay. So this is the total vote in right now is 60 percent.

“Tolerico is at 51.8 and Jasmine Crocket is at 46.94. Here's the thing. I can touch this”

and tell you where this vote comes from. All of that vote, more than 50 percent in each case, is from early in person voting. About 2 percent is early by male voting. 2 percent is election day. So we've got no election day count in most of these places. I'm going to go all across the state and show you no election day votes in El Paso, San Antonio, Bayer County, no election day votes. Austin, we haven't even broken it out. Corpus Christi, I've gone all through the state.

This is the only place I can find with any significant election day vote. It's 18 percent of the vote with 71 percent counted. So we just don't have election day votes anywhere. And to your point about Dallas County, this business about sequestering votes, this isn't sequestering military ballots or male imbalance, things that you can actually sequester because they're in a different bucket or a different bag. Someone just decided, a judge decided that anybody who wasn't in line

“at 7 o'clock doesn't get to vote, but they didn't make any line. They didn't sequester those”

votes. So this is throwing the whole thing into disarray. But across the state, we are just not seeing early vote day off vote anywhere. So when we're looking statewide, in the fact that we've got

60 percent of the vote in, we're talking about 30,000, they're fewer than 30,000 election day

votes having been counted so far and reported in Texas. So this 40 percent that we're missing in most case is today's vote. So when you look at, when you say the associated press is saying this is too early to call, they mean it. It's really too early to call. There's a there's a good spread between Tolarico and Crocod, but we're missing 40 percent of the vote right now and we're hoping that this all comes in fairly quickly. We are still waiting on more stuff from Dallas.

We're waiting from Williamson County, which is reported zero votes at the morning moment. Two precincts have our staying open till 11 p.m. Eastern there. So we won't get that for a while.

“That's north of Austin. We're expecting Tolarico to do well there. And El Paso County,”

we have now got to 60 percent of 59 percent of the vote in. And Tolarico is winning that 62

to 35, but a lot of vote missing in Texas right now. Okay. Allie, thank you for breaking that down for us. I was a month, Senator Townsend. You've been all over this in terms of anticipating some of these problems in these specific counties. What do you understand about the way this has played out over the course of the night and the reaction to what's happened with the Texas courts? So I talked to a number of people on the ground from the Texas Democratic Party because,

again, the parties of the administrators of the elections in a primary. This does not apply for the general. So in the general, the state is in charge of the election. So people think, "Oh, we're going to have this particular issue. Come November." No. Could be a different issue, but not this one. Lawrence and I were chatting in the green room and he said that this also affect the Republicans. I thought it was a very good question. I asked the chair of the Texas

Democratic Party and the chair said it is their understanding that the judges order is specific to the Democratic primary because, again, they didn't do a joint primary. So it is only the Democratic votes in Dallas County. The particular law that is being cited, Texas Democrats were large. If we look at the lawsuit, the lawsuit that was filed was filed by the Dallas County Democrats, not the Texas Democratic Party. I say that because there are people, there are

factions within the Texas Democratic Party that say, "Uh, Texas law is very, very strict." And it's very strict about when people can vote. Texas law, a law from 1985, says that the voting in Texas has from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. There has only been one time in our recent history since that law has, it's 40 years, laws over the May. It's only been one time in our history in May of 2024 that an extension has been given. And that was very specific. In Dallas County,

a judge said there was a disaster because power was out in polling places in May of 2024. And because the power was out in about a hundred polling places, they needed to extend the voting in those polling places and that voting was extended for that very particular reason.

that this 1985 law has been challenged directly in this way. And yes, it is the kin Pakistan, the who is a candidate on the ballot again. This doesn't affect them. It's just about the Democrats. They are weaponizing a law that has been on the books for 40 years to throw chaos into what is happening in the Democratic Party. The last point I'll make is this. There are a lot of votes out there. No one's going to count their chickens before they hatch or

their eggs, if you will. We have not heard from the, I've reached out to people within the tolerable campaign. They are not saying whether or not yet they are in the belief that Jasmine Crocodile is that we will not know tonight. They are reserving their comments. So if they have

“some comment, I'll come back. I know Eugene is also talking to them. But I think that we are in a place”

now where, come to tomorrow, there will be some people that will say, Jasmine Crocodile lost this race because of what Republicans did. And then there will be some people that say, oh, I think she just lost this race because she didn't run a good campaign. Either way, the narrative on this is now up in the air because of what the Republican in Texas decided to do to play in the race.

I was going to say that to me is the most important part of this. I don't want to get lost in the

weeds here people. I really don't. This is an orchestrated coordinated effort period. It has been from the very beginning. I don't know, but it is the law. That is the point I want to make it is the law. It is the law. But we've already seen now in Texas and across this country, how the law can be weaponized and used to full effect when you want to move the needle in a certain

“direction if you want to stop something. And so I just find it, why does Pakistan care, whether”

or not Democrats given the confusion that was wrought in this situation, want to vote for next to two hours, doesn't change his numbers, right? Doesn't change what's happening on the Republican side. So what do you care for? It's not about what we're standing up for the law. Well, you're reaching back 40 years plus to stand up for a law that no one's had to invoke before. So you know, I just think we need to understand what's going on here very much to what Stephanie was

saying before in what a lot of us who've been in working in this space in hearing on the ground that this is the all of these things are our story lies that are being created that will be used later on. And we just need to understand how they're going to be used now. So we recognize it when they're used later. There is one other element of what's going on here is being reported out by the Dallas morning news that some of the confusion, some of the chaos, some of voters being told

to go the wrong place may be the faults or maybe attributable to the fact that Texas Republicans just changed all their congressional district boundaries right before this election and they

“maybe didn't follow through and all the logistical work you need to do to make sure that people”

still get to vote in the right place after you've done that. We've got more reporting on that

coming up we're going to take a quick break. We didn't expect it to be amazing in this exact

way, but it's not going to be a pretty amazing thing. It was going to be amazing. I wasn't thinking this way. We'll be right back. A live short daily news podcast focus on just one story. But right now you probably need more. On up first from NPR we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big crazy world of ours on any given

morning. Listen now to the up first podcast from NPR. Welcome back to our coverage here on MSNow of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms. It's turning out to be a super interesting one. Let's bring back our colleague Eugene Daniels who has some new reporting as we are following this developing story out of Texas. Eugene, what are you hearing? Yeah, Rachel, my biggest question was what can happen next? What are the things on the table

for the Carke campaign as you're dealing with? What the Texas Supreme Court said? I talked to a 25-year veteran of election law in Texas who said the key is that every county has a

ballot board. Each county has their own and the ballot board will meet the first meeting in

Dallas is going to be on Monday. Now that ballot board will kind of get together and they will in fact vote to accept the pre or post 7 PM vote. So this is up to this ballot board because of as we all know and I think Simone has stated a couple of times the elections are run by the parties in Texas and so when the polls close at 7 o'clock this person says that person was noted. If it was a guy in a black shirt and black jeans that person was noted and when they voted

that was made clear that that was the person who was in line at 7 PM. Now it's easy to track

Court what they essentially said was keep this group in a pack over here and we'll look at it. Now when the board meets on Monday they may decide that it may not matter. They may see the amount of votes that happened after 7 PM and say they're not enough votes here to change the election. And so this will happen on Monday. These are people who are Democrats. A lot of these in there won't be any Republican shenanigans allowed here. It is going to be interesting to see how

the shakes out Williamson County will also have the same thing. It's an unclear when their next board meeting is but this is kind of how these things are going to actually shake out as we move

forward and as you said amazing and chaotic to say the least. Yeah Eugene that's really helpful.

The ballot boards in each county appreciate that Eugene and again keep us surprised as you learn more and now you're continuing to work the phones and talk to your sources in Texas. I mentioned before the break that the Dallas morning news has some interesting reporting saying that some of the I mean you got to sort of think about this as a couple different things that have happened in Dallas County. Number one is people turned up to vote in Dallas County and we're told you're not allowed to vote

“here you need to vote someplace else you weren't expecting to have to vote. And that is”

suppressive right it's inconvenient enough and difficult enough and time consuming enough and confusing enough and off-putting enough that that is suppressive of the vote itself. Then you get this separate issue later on in the day when after that happened all day long that was the cause for a Dallas judge saying okay let's keep things open a little longer in Dallas County and then that extension of the voting hours in Dallas County is what was overruled by the Texas Supreme Court

which has led to all this stuff about the you know voters before 7 p.m. and voters after 7 p.m. and all those things. But that vote from that ruling from the Texas Supreme Court and the issue of how difficult and complicated and confusing it was for people to vote all day long

in Dallas County there's a kind of two separate but related things. And on that first point about

how difficult it was for people to vote in Dallas County Dallas morning news is reporting that this confusion about the Dallas County Republican Party saying no you're not allowed to vote

“Countywide you have to vote for your specific precinct and that being new for this election”

season of people not knowing that was going to happen and that being confusing that was compounded because the Texas Secretary of State's vote Texas.gov website was not updated with Dallas County's new precinct maps after they were changed in December after the state did this new redistricting. The state redistricting in Texas at the insistence of Donald Trump it was a late and out of time sort of not the right time to do it redistricting one of the logistical consequences of that

according to the Dallas morning news is that the precinct maps weren't updated again at the Secretary of State's website. So what that means is that some voters in Dallas County who were searching for theirs doing the right thing doing their research looking up searching for their particular polling place on the state's websites some voters in Dallas County checking the state's website were then given the wrong information about where to vote because their precinct

mapped chain their precinct map changed when they redistricted. By Tuesday afternoon the state website was directing voters to use the county election search tool instead because the state search tool was not working right because they had the wrong maps and of course as we know the

Dallas County election search tool then crashed as everybody in the county again the second most

popular county in the state tried to use that county tool in order to figure out where to go. So you can understand why a judge might have ruled that maybe things should be kept open a little later to account for this sort of mistakes particularly because some of these mistakes appear to have been on the part of the state of Texas. But now the Texas State Supreme Court has stopped them from having extended those hours. Well how unaware was the Republican party in Dallas County

“of this mismatch? How aware were they when they said no no no you have to go to your precinct?”

How aware were they that no one would be able to find their precinct? Did they know that when they were forcing that choice? Yeah. And what can Democrats do right now at 1047 PM Eastern time at 1947 in most of Texas? What can Democrats both in the in the party machinery and party activists and party operatives and the two campaigns of James Tolerico and Jasmine Crocket do right now to mitigate the harm that has been done to the confidence of the people of Texas

that it is worth going out and voting for a Democratic candidate because you like them. And what can they do to try to mitigate the reputational harm to Texas elections that Republicans will try to

here on out most importantly the November general election. Well and in if this were a normal

election with everybody we knew who their campaign manager was and their senior advisors the campaign managers at this point would be talking and they would develop a plan that would be approved by their respective candidates. Up until even right now there's confusion actually among Democratic party circles about who Jasmine Crocket's campaign manager actually is. If I were in my former life if I was still a Democratic strategist I would I would advise that Tolerico and Crocket

“get on the phone and they speak directly. I think also there's a clear from behind the veil”

of ignorance which is to say not knowing what the outcome is here. The principal position is that the Democratic party believes in as many people voting as possible in the principal position. And now votes independent of the outcome is that all the votes should be counted. I think that it doesn't matter what where the ship fall what they may people I don't even think that's a

close call. It also seems to me that the correct things just on first principles

is that that be a shared consensus view from any candidate in the race and all those votes should be counted. So it sounds also in this case I mean you know the history of election law about primaries is very fascinating and very weird because it is both basically a private club electing its leader and also a state function and has a really interesting long record in front of the spring court. In this case it sounds like that ballot board made

zeal to McCall as opposed to the judge. I don't know but it certainly seems like if it is the ballot board and there is consensus on this from the Democratic party that like that is the clear

“position. I mean I think what they're failing at right now is there's a huge vacuum of information”

to state the obvious right. So we're all trying to navigate what the ballot board is. Why are they meeting on Monday? Can that be moved up? I think there's a couple things. Tolerico should come out now before anyone calls a race if there's even a race called and we don't know that it would be and say every vote should be counted. That is something that's a value and it should be counted in Dallas County. It should be counted everywhere. Then he can come back and he could

even give out a printed. It can be a written statement. It doesn't even have to be in person. The local county Democratic officials should come out publicly on camera and say we're going to do everything possible to ensure every vote is counted. We have lawyers. We're going to move this up and here's how this process works because right now what's happening online is the conspiracy theories are feeding and it's on the internet really. But people do look at that and people tell

“their neighbors and it's like oh something was stolen here is. So I think there is more saying”

a little bit as better than saying nothing and there are a couple people who would be saying more

right now in my view. And to all the points because the parties are the ones who are basically

running these primaries which goes back to when I was chairman I advocated that we abolished primaries but that's a whole another conversation. Because of stuff like this because you have bias political actors setting the terms of engagement in and out right off and on and can at a whim decide you get to play or you don't get to play. How you get to play but this is something this opens up a door for conversations downstream. In this moment though I think to both

Simone's and Chris's point I don't care who her campaign manager is. I don't care who this campaign manager is. This is a principle to principle conversation. This is what both of them between the candidates they get on the phone and go every vote to your point which is core a core tenet of what Democrats believe. If you cast a ballot damn it it will get counted right and so it doesn't matter if you were in line it's at seven o'clock this morning or seven PM this evening if it's extended

and my sister my cousin your uncle shows up at seven thirty that vote gets counted. That's the case they need to make to your point of avoiding the conspiracy nonsense the two of them. This has nothing to do with the outcome this has everything to do with every vote getting counted and so that's the conversation I'd like to see the two principles have get off your high horses stop being the candidate and be the next U.S. senator in this moment. Can I just say I do think

that if we just look at how this race has played out there has I think it has been a lot more contentious online that it has actually been for the voters in a person but I do think that between the two candidates there is a mutual respect there but I do think that the cracker campaign and the congresswoman herself feels some type of way for lack of a better term about how some of these things have transpired. I think it's notable that congresswoman crocket came out

and she put her stake on the ground put her cards on the table to essentially boss the tolerical campaign in now they are in a position where they need to respond or not respond. Jasmine

confusion for the voters because the end of the day this is about the voters the people being

“able to cast their ballots and for it to count so we'll see I know they're all watching because”

people texted me get it together we don't talk about what we think you have but let on now call us come on TV I need to jump in here we do have a projection to make in the Texas Senate primary on the Republican side. John Cornton the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator from Texas and can Pakistan the Texas Attorney General will both advance to a runoff election which would be held on May 26 in Texas in order to simply pick which Republican candidate will

represent the party on the U.S. Senate line of the ballot in November this is a remarkable situation for an incumbent U.S. Senator to be in as far as I know correct me if I'm wrong I don't

think Cornton is ever lost by anything smaller than double digits. All right as ACs never you

never not one by double digits in Texas he again as as Jen Psaki was noting earlier this evening about a year ago was very close to being elected Senate majority leader in the United States Senate

“and now is paddling for his life at terms of this runoff and and I think it's important to”

just remind people that he won this barely there has a couple points ahead of Pakistan by spending eight boat load of money a lot of money from outside groups he really battle to get that 43 percent to 40.4 percent and the difference now between them and I saw somebody quoted saying this you love you love voters because they say things are like that sticks with me who said you know I like John Cornton he's not bad but Ken Paxton like I'd walk across hot cold for that guy

right and if you if Ken Paxton has I know he's corrupt I know all of the things about him but if he has the fire and the belly of his supporters John Cornton still has a huge problem here and if you think that John Cornton spent a lot to get here just wait I'm just gonna spend in the next

30 million and I mean they're gonna put Donald Trump in like a Truman show compartment so that he

“can't intervene in the race at all I mean tell you because I mean he again he is just positive here”

right like if he comes down either way there he all of this is is directed about dealing with the big guy let's take a quick break we'll be right back many more results to come stay with us we're coming up on 11 p.m. Eastern time on what it's turning out to be a really interesting first big primary night of the 2026 midterms this is a look at the status in the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate primary this is too early to call for our partners at the

Associated Press you see James Tolerico just over 50% Jasmine Cockett just under 50% 50% is the magic number in terms of whether or not this is going to go to a race excuse me to a runoff in which these two will have to face off again at the end of May if either of them gets over 50% they will win outright and they will be the Democratic nominee for Senate in November on the Republican side we do have a projection that in the Senate race in Texas the Republican race will

go to a runoff that will be incumbent Republican U.S. Senator John Cornean in a runoff against Texas attorney general Ken Paxton I will just share this with you John Cornean reacting to the news that he will be going to the runoff against Ken Paxton Cornean said this quote Texas Republican primary voters will learn more about Ken's indefensible personal behavior and failures in office quote judgment day is coming for Ken Paxton thank you all that's going to be a lot of fun

Ali so we've obviously been very focused on the Senate races but let's talk about some of the house races that you've been watching as well okay this one this one's a gift for you in Texas 15 and this is just moments ago been called Bobby Polito is going to represent the Democrats in the election 88% of the vote in Bobby Polito is a as a musician a Grammy award-winning Tejano artist and he has defeated Ada Quayar which is an interesting race but to your point

about Cornean and struggling common struggling tonight there are a lot of incumbent struggling I want to go to district 18 in Texas this is an interesting story there are two incumbent two Democratic incumbents running against each other Christian Manifee and Al Green Christian Manifee has been in Congress for about three weeks or something Al Green had his district redistricted so to 18 even though even though Manifee has just been there for a few weeks it's more his

district than it was Al Green's district they're running against each other 70% of the vote is in I do want to remind you again virtually none of the same day vote is in two five three percent

is is winning there let's go to Dallas right there Texas 33 this is an interesting story

Colin Alred was the incumbent Julie Johnson is the incumbent they worked together this has not been a very friendly campaign calling on with 61% of the vote

“Colin Alred is winning there 45.5% to 33.9% for Julie Johnson remember Colin Alred stepped”

out to run for the Senate last time and now he's back in let's go to GOP primaries I want to go to let's go to all that where am I looking here right well I was going to show you oh here we go let's go to Gonzalez district 23 we're talking about this earlier Tony Gonzalez who beat his challenger Brandon Herrera by about 400 points last time around is now still ahead it's

58% of the vote in and he's at 44% to 40% for for Brandon Herrera again this was a super

super close race last time and there's still 42% of the vote to come in but at the moment Tony Gonzalez despite all the scandals surrounding him and it is a lot is still ahead that is remarkable yeah Chris God I just I just want to react to John Cornan's statement one of the things it's so sort of fascinating and sort of grimly comedic about watching these sort of battles in the era of Donald Trump is like downward from is the president I say so you're going to attack a

Republican because what he did he was corrupt he self-deal he stole from the public till he acted terribly in his private life with women like is that does that work anymore I mean there there is this sense that like maybe it does maybe there's a different set of rules for Donald Trump and

you can still run a campaign against your opponent in a Republican primary in which you basically say

“this person is of such low character you should not vote for him but that has been a tougher”

and tougher and tougher sell in the era of Donald Trump who basically occupies the status of anti-hero in the imagination Republican primary voters and the more that you talk about him or you know in his character the more they're like that sounds great to put and let's just be just just set the table in terms of what's going on with Paxton so Cornan has been running ads against Paxton in this primary calling him a wife cheater and fraud he's noting that Paxton's wife

filed for divorce from Paxton on quote biblical grounds which as we noted earlier was not about you know it was not about like the the you know shellfish the shellfish restrictions in Leviticus exactly he then explicitly says in the ad Paxton then has since started sleeping with a married mother of seven I mean we're really getting into the nitty gritty in terms of what's in these ads Paxton was overwhelmingly impeached by Texas Republicans in the state legislature

they impeached him by overwhelming numbers in 2023 that was him allegedly abusing his office in order to conceal and affair he's also been under federal investigation for bribery allegations DOJ only declined to prosecute those bribery allegations in early 2025 he also was under state securities fraud investigation and had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle those claims with his alleged fraud victims and it's a two and a half point race tonight right

so I mean yeah what it is there's there's 12 points at 13 points that Wesley Hunt has as

“of right now and that's what this next stage is going to be about yeah it's going to be about”

going after those and and in the generally the way it works with an incumbent like this when you have a chance to vote against the incumbent you make your best pick in voting against the incumbent that Wesley Hunt vote easily could have gone to Paxton Paxton's a much bigger candidate they chose not to there's something about those voters that they don't want to go for the wife cheater and fraud and Rachel the most interesting thing about that add against Paxton is that corn and didn't pay

for all of the Republican members of the Senate pay for it and there is a public in the Senate thing so good so every single Republican who you can Paxton would like to join in the Senate has already paid to tell Texans that you are a wife cheater and fraud that's in there add against you well to Chris's point this is that that term we used to hear about moral authority which was big on the moral majority in the Christian right and it's all been shredded and then

there's something else beneath that which is this anger at the Epstein class and part of that has been exposed to be bipartisan and you can look at some of that and there's been accountability efforts

him and sent him a vulgar birthday card to being a president whose DOJ fought against any transparency or accountability for the Epstein class and so it's beyond ironic it's ridiculous that Donald Trump ever rode the wave of any of that and yet it does seem like there's some come up in because there are people who are angry about that stuff and the wider elitism and the idea

that these rules that have been subjected to everyone but the people making them is a powerful

“double standard argument and so it's like if you should get a second chance because you had a”

marijuana offense in college and still be able to get a job right a lot of people say second chance these people would say no not if you're a regular worker or you're from a marginalized community and they would lecture and they would talk about welfare queens and then they're the same people that want to keep Howard Lutnik who lied about going to Epstein Island on Trump's cabinet so I don't know when it all gets sorted out right but it's a problem for them okay but the curious thing to

me is like which way that cuts in this race right because I think he you know the polling we have as people who are self-identified is super conservative of the ones who are leading for Paxton people who identify a self-identified more moderate or early in for corn and I don't know would the way that sort of cuts and you remember and you know like how much do people create a separate set of rules for no Trump and anyone else? The other question to me and Jen I'd be curious

here your feedback on this you know Democratic voters got very into like strategic voting the really who can win who is the most electable Republican voters have really issued that you know

“that's why you had the Mark Robinson situation North Carolina I do wonder if they start to think”

more strategically a little bit now it's not a year ago in the heady days of vibe shift Donald Trump will rule for a thousand years there's a lot of like obvious and evident discontent around you everywhere you look he's polling at 39% you do wonder whether in a Republican primary you can make an argument now that you couldn't make last year or previous ones of like this guy might actually lose if you elect him. Well but electability and the question is all in the eye of the

beholder right so it's like some people in Texas may think Ken Paxon is much more exciting totally he he's got that's a word yes well I mean look and he's building the exact and there there is clearly a group of 40% of people who voted in this primary who felt that way or chose them over because the the vote that would make the most sense is John Corne and he may not have won the

leadership battle but he is very high ranking in Washington he's very powerful he can make calls he can

return thing to the people of Texas they didn't care about that and so I think yes the Epstein thing but I actually think it's an it's an anti Washington anti creature of Washington Corne is a very Washington character and it's interesting to me and you may be right about this group of voters and who he can get but he's doubling down on his closing ad strategy essentially with this statement I mean this is like judgment days coming for Ken Paxon Texas Republican primary

voters will learn more about Ken's indefensible personal behavior and failures and often because

“that message crush it in the closing ads I mean that's what he has right now so he's making a bad he”

can pick up those people maybe he can maybe he can't we'll see I just I just amused by the fact that thinking here because in the midst of all of this about Ken Paxon and Trump you have in a congressional district one representative Gonzalez yeah who himself is a creature of Washington who himself has all kinds of dirty laundry that has been exposed and yet he's winning his seat totally and so this is the Republican party this is my party in this hour at this at this moment

which is why it needs such an incredible political enema unlike anybody that ever seen

can you find a visual thank you for that a thank you very much a biblical one a biblical one we're gonna go to Rosa Flores who is at this polling location in Dallas Texas from which we joined her a little while ago Rosa I understand you've been in communication with the Dallas County judge who was involved or who issued the initial role ruling that that the polling places in Dallas County should be kept open what can you tell us so I just talked to the election judge this

charge of the Democratic primary of the polling place here reach a word I am that I've been following all day long where there's been a lot of very frustrated voters trying to go to the right polling place trying to check where they needed to vote to make sure that their that their ballots were cast I have bad news Rachel because I just talked to him and he tells me that he's understanding and he told me like this Rosa I am not I'm not an attorney but here's his

understanding because the Texas Supreme Court struck down that lower court ruling he says that

is how we put it and I'm a daughter girl so I asked him about the numbers for this particular

“precinct just as a slice of what is happening in Dallas County he said that today”

495 people voted here at this polling place over 400 voters were redirected to another polling place because they were at the wrong polling place now between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. 18 provisional ballots were cast at this polling place those are the ballots that he says those might not count again his name is David Fisher he says Rosa I have not an attorney Rachel I spoke to one of those people who cast the provisional ballots it was a woman and that had an injury on her foot she had gold

sneakers she had rhinestones on her crutches because she was so enthused about voting and determined to vote she said that she had gone to a different polling location earlier in the day but she wanted to vote and I haven't talked to her yet I'm hoping to call her here pretty soon to get a reaction to the fact that her vote might not count and that's exactly what she told me her fear was that because she was redirected throughout the day and because the website wasn't working

that her vote might not count I'm going to call her I'm going to deliver the news to her that and get her reaction because her vote might actually not count Rachel and it may as yet be undecided we may not know as this as litigation continues it may be that the provisional ballots are not counted now but at some point in the litigation process they may be counted

and it seems like it's still contingent at this point but regardless of how it's ultimately

decided the rigor moral and the run around that voters like her have had to deal with today in Dallas County is itself a scandal regardless of whether or not

“regardless I think the ultimate dispensation of how those votes are handled Rosa thank you very”

much again and and interrupt us let us know as you learn more we're really interested in continuing to follow this throughout the course of the evening as the story continues to develop all right we've got much more ahead here we're going to check in on a couple of key house races we were just talking about the Tony Gonzalez race we're also going to look at the Dan Crenshaw race we're also going to look at a key race where there's an endangered incumbent in North Carolina

lots more to come including for the results in the Texas Democratic Senate primary state with us

welcome back to our special coverage here on MS now of the first big primary night of the

2026 midterms we are still watching results come in in Texas in that very important Democratic U.S. Senate primary between Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket and James Tella Rico the state representative there continuing to watch that but we've also had eyes on a bunch of interesting house primaries it's very unusual for an incumbent member of Congress to lose his or her seat in a contested primary but it does happen and there's a number of house incumbents

who are looking down that kind of a barrel tonight Ali what are you looking at is at least three tonight maybe more than that Texas of 23 which is in the far west of Texas this is the one in which Tony Gonzalez is the incumbent he is ahead marginally at the moment by a thousand votes at the moment but it's 61% of the voting anything can happen here Tony Gonzalez ran again Brendan Herrera his challenger last time around Herrera came within four four hundred votes

of defeating Gonzalez and since then Gonzalez has become sort of scandal prone and involved in a lot of nasty stuff he's still leading in Texas 23 so we're going to keep an eye on that want to go to Houston for a moment and take a look at this 62% of the voting Dan Crenshaw the incumbent is is is pretty far behind is he's 39 to Steve Toath's 57.5 Steve Toath feels that Dan Crenshaw

“doesn't represent the America first movement Crenshaw is a military veteran that's how he he”

lost his eye he's a supporter for instance of Ukraine Steve Toath thinks that's not an American priority Dan Crenshaw has often said that he'd like things to be a little bit more civil in Congress so he's at the moment losing to Dan Crenshaw to Steve Toath let's go to North Carolina in the Democratic primaries here there's an interesting story here that Jen was talking about a little earlier we now have 94% of the vote in but it's so close that it's not been called yet

this is NC4 Valerie Fusha the incumbent is leading by 1,682 votes it's 49.4 to 48.3 Nita Alem is the is the challenge you're here this one at night it's very rare that you have 94% of the vote in and you're not actually able to call a race so this one we're watching very closely

Fusha's 69 years old alum is is 32 years old alum has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and just to Democrats she's really good at social media Democratic party figures like David Hogg of Campaign for her Valor Fusha not a particularly controversial Democratic member of Congress and all particularly conservative Democratic member of Congress but facing some of those other sort of winds really in terms of the way that the Democratic party's evolving yeah I mean they're

both for Medicare for all they're pretty progressive on a range of things what's also very

“interesting about this race that I think a lot of Democrats are going to be talking about is there was”

and kind of an anti-apac pack that spent a lot of money on behalf of Mito Lom and what they accused

the incumbent of is basically her ties to a pack now she has not taken money from a pack since

2024 she took some in 2024 and before that but she has basically said I'm not taking money from them and she hasn't but still there's no question I would say that that has a factor here in how close this race is and I think other Democrats are going to talk about that and it's going to be a factor stuff during my time off I spoke to three big Democratic donors and we were talking who's doing well who's not doing well they didn't want to talk about any one's names all they

wanted to talk about was Ken Paxton and they said tomorrow Democrats need to wake up and realize this isn't about policy this isn't about platform this is about the United States we cannot depend on the fact that we have free and fair elections here and all three donors that I spoke to said Democrats need to get their game on and bring the right weapons to this flight that we are now in for like it's not even about is it James Toleriko is it going to be jazzman

rocket it's do we have free and fair elections and based on what we're seeing tonight these three donors said we don't feel that way and I said well that means somebody's asking you for a big

big check tomorrow and they all said yo you know but it's amazing to me that like no one had any

interest in talking about any of these individual candidates and they are so thrown and bothered by what's happening tonight you know vis-a-vis contacts which actually I mean as much as you're saying it's not a policy it's not a politics thing it's such a political opening for Democratic candidates and Democratic party people who can recognize that that that's where the the fuel is here standing

“up for American small D democracy as a small D Democrat right now is the best thing you can”

probably do if you're political prospects yes but I think the point they were trying to make is stop thinking small Democrats stop being kind and nice and consider it this is the fight of your lifetime because it is about democracy yeah can I just on this point I was saying the strain the break but Greg Kazar who's a progressive he's chair of the progressive caucus he's a Texas Democrat rising star young he put he tweeted or extra whatever we're calling

at these days basically saying James teller he go the we have not called this race is the future

of the Democratic party and Jasmine Crockett is fantastic and great and can't see can't wait to see what she does essentially I'm paraphrasing but why I think this is interesting is because there's a recognition among leading Democrats who love Jasmine Crockett and love James teller he go that this is going to be a problem unless there is some type of unified front and kind of unified effort um so that was quite telling to me and I think it's part of breaking people out because

they're looking at this and they're like this seems chaotic they're messing with us what are we doing yeah how they're messing with us we should also just know it I just want to say like just for the point of um mathematical rigor here that like we just don't know a what the margin might end up being and what the margin of the um votes that are in that window are and the reason I say that is not to say like well it's fine it doesn't matter it's not outcome to turn it

of no it does matter on principal grounds but it fundamentally I think when you're thinking about like what the outcome the election is if the election is won by six or seven points or five points or four point I mean it does it does matter a tremendous amount in terms of what happens in the

“rest of the night and the rest of the vote coming I think this is so important and this is the for”

these democratic election officials if they could share how many of these votes I know we got some information from excellent reporting that was great reporting it are out there that would help provide at least some clarity in some information may I interject with something that might be a constructive addition to this conversation on the phone right now is Dallas County elections have been a straight up all atoms who can hopefully help through help us through uh some of the detail

service or atoms thank you very much for taking time to join us tonight absolutely thanks for having me so first of all can you tell us what your job is and what you are responsible for so we understand your remit and what your day has been like this far so I'm the Dallas County election administrator so I oversee elections administration in all of the Dallas County Texas okay and today Dallas County Texas has had some trouble and its elections administration

this grave consternation that it's causing particularly in democratic party circles worrying that's something wrong has happened in in in Dallas County that might not only affect the outcome of this

these crucial Senate primaries but that might signal that something has been sort of messed with

in terms of people's ability to cast their votes and have them counted as they were cast what should we understand about what's happened today in Dallas County and the kind of chaos that has been

“reported so I think what's important to know is that for the last handful of years Dallas County”

voters have been used to voting at vote centers where they can go to any location in the county and cast their ballot they were able to do that for early vote which we had all the way up until this past Friday and then because the political parties were not able to enter into a joint election here in Texas if you if both political parties agree to a joint election in the county then

there can be countywide voting so that would continue that had previously been the case there was not

a joint primary this time so that forced us to go back to precinct based voting which has not happened in Dallas County in quite some time I believe back to 2018 so then voters who had been used to going to any location that he close to work maybe close to school now were forced to go to precinct based voting like I said has not happened here in nearly a decade and that created

“quite a bit of confusion on election day in terms of the legal process that has played out over”

the course of this afternoon and into this evening we initially saw an order essentially that because of a lot of voters experience of the kind of confusion that you're describing and for the reasons that you're describing there was an order that polling places should be held open longer than they otherwise would be in Dallas County and then that order was suspended effectively

during the extended polling times by an order of the Texas Supreme Court first let me ask you

if I if I got all that right if I said that correctly and and if I did can you tell us what that has meant in practical terms in your county so yeah you got that white you've been paying attention in terms of the practical matter practically when you're dealing with massive changes in election rules this quickly which is not unheard of in elections but when it's happening and you're dealing

“with the thousands of workers that we have out in the field in order to properly shift them to make”

sure everybody is on the same page can be a monumental task and is kind of whiplash of going from six o'clock to approximately six o'clock all the poll workers expecting all right we're going to close it seven to then surely after that being notified no we're going to stay open until nine because of the order but it only applied to the Democrats because I mentioned this was a non-joined primary so we didn't apply to the Republicans so there's this message going out that the Republicans

are still going to close it seven Democrats will stay open till nine and then this goes to the Texas Supreme Court that then stays in the decision which we got some time about eight thirty and now message has to go then back out to the workers in the field to then accommodate that change that it happened because of the stay so a lot of complex pieces happening all within a very very quick amount of time for all of our poll workers to be able to adjust to and have to then

explain to the voters that are in line of what is going on and and if I'm understanding correctly all those poll workers are in mirried different locations because this is precinct-based voting and so it's not like they're all in one place where they can all collectively get together physically in the same place and talk about how this is going to be done right this is disparate locations that is correct these are hundreds of locations throughout the county that were selected by the

political parties so some of them are same places where you have Democrats or Republicans other ones where they're weren't in this non-joint primary when you go back to this precinct-based voting it allowed them to the political parties to choose all these different locations but we do have a communication tool to communicate with them but once again depending on you know how busy they are very things are going on we need to make sure that they're paying attention to their messages

and making sure that they're fulfilling each section of these requirements as they came down relatively quickly. When the Supreme Court ordered that votes cast after 7 p.m. which was the initial closing time before was extended that that votes cast after 7 p.m. should be essentially

over the course of the day is that something that was technically feasible at all locations?

Technically feasible yes that they can sequester them. Any of the ballots that would be cast that's ordered by a court when a location has to stay open is going to vote by provisional ballot. So you would cast the provisional ballot you would make a notation that it is because of a court order to be to be held after or that was cast after 7 o'clock that you were not in line by 7 o'clock.

“Those already have methods where they can be easily sequestered. Okay and is this still a live issue?”

As I was reading the Supreme Court ruling I'm not a lawyer and I'm not necessarily good at reading specific stuff like this even when I'm pretending to be a lawyer but it seemed to me that there was an indication that this is still a live issue that this was essentially a stay that the Supreme Court had issued but that this was a matter that was still going to be further under further consideration. Is it still a live issue and is that how and when it will be decided whether those

provisional ballots are in fact counted? Yes so at this point the it is my expectation that this is a stay for the time being there will be continued litigation potentially upon this and then we'll see what happens. So I do not anticipate that this is the end of this particular situation. I anticipate that there will be further litigation about what has happened this evening. Not just in Dallas County but around the state of Texas we have been noticing that election day votes haven't been

tallied in at a pace that's keeping up with other forms of vote early vote in particular and male vote.

“When do you expect election day votes will be counted in Dallas County in those results reported?”

I would imagine because of that initial stay that both back the the processing time I anticipate it may not be until well into the early morning hours that we will have final numbers. At this point we're still waiting on a handful of locations to report back. This is a geographically large county not just large in population but large in geography. So some of these places that had been open later even when that court ruling when the stay came down if you had anybody

in line that had been there at seven o'clock and was in line they were still allowed to vote a regular ballot and we do know that there were a few locations in the county that had lines that had been that long. So there weren't cases to where people were still voting until relatively recently. So we expect it's going to be a little while before those returns come in. Dallas County elections administrator Paul Adams. I'm just going to ask you one last question before we let you go

and I really appreciate you giving us this time tonight helping us understand this with such clarity to our audiences. We've been talking about this so long tonight. There are going to be a lot of people who are having a lot of feelings about what has happened in Dallas County tonight. We're already seeing people sort of theorizing and coming up with relatively elaborate speculation in terms of who done it and why this happened and who was behind it and who's fault it is

and whether or not the election results from Dallas County and therefore from Texas should be trusted. I just wanted to put that to you as Dallas County elections administrator and just ask what you would say to the voters of Dallas County and other people looking in on your county from outside around the state and around the country right now who are having those sorts of

sort of dark feelings about what's happened here. Well I would say two things. I would say that first,

“I think that's one of the reasons why I support county-wide vote centers to allow voters to vote”

at any location where they have had previously in the county. I think it's convenient. I think it is helpful to the voters to vote that way. The other thing I would say, people are looking for okay well who's behind what's going on as I mentioned previously all of the election workers that are here in the county. These are not people that have been brought in from someplace else. These are your family, your friends, your neighbors, community members that step up and volunteer

to put on this process and that to me is what helps ensure the integrity of our system is that we have people that are just from every walk of life that are stepping up

serving basically as volunteers to make sure that our system of democracy works.

in a very long day and have a long night already. I dare say that you are just at the beginning.

“So good luck to you and your colleagues in Dallas County and again, we really do appreciate”

your spending this time with us to help us understand what's happening there. Good luck to you, sir. Thank you. All right. I should say that in Texas we are seeing some counties starting to post their day of vote. We're going to be checking in on one very big one next right after this break. Much more ahead. Stay with us. Welcome back to our coverage of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms.

Here's a really interesting race. This is not something that we would typically be talking about at the national level, but there is a state Senate race in North Carolina where it is the state

Senate Republican leader. His name is Phil Berger and he's been the most powerful Republican

in North Carolina for like 15 years and he was facing a primary challenge this year tonight from a very popular very maga local county, a local sheriff, a local elected sheriff. This state Senate leader in North Carolina then decided out of the goodness of his heart that he would definitely force through redistricting in North Carolina to benefit the Republican party and then miraculously after doing so, got the president of the United States to endorse him

in his state Senate race. Rather than in North Carolina rather than the maga sheriff who was this got the maga sheriff guy was like the head of sheriff's for Trump in 2016 and he was Trump's

“North Carolina chairman in 2020. I think so it's been this incredibly interesting race where there's”

this very maga guy who's very like who's very like Trump's favorite kind of guy like where's

cowboy hat and all the thing against this guy who did Trump a real solid and who is a very powerful

North Carolina Republican figure and got the endorsement in exchange for it. And did get the endorsement from Trump as of right now in that race this is the North Carolina state Senate President Proton Phil Berger. There's 99.09% of the precincts have reported at this point and the distance between them is 50.00% to 50.00%. It is literally two votes between them out of 26,000 votes cast. Phil Berger has 13,075 votes and the sheriff who's primary in him has 13,077 votes.

Wow. Which is just I mean, hey everybody every vote counts. Every vote counts. So presumably that will be going to a recount or a runoff.

“Kind of interesting to you though because there's a little bit of this like”

there's the Trump endorsement and then it's like we really know who you support. You know what I mean? Well, like he can you can get him. Someone could put the phone in front of him and he can do the like his like but like we know who Trump wants to win. There's only so much that we're in the costume. Exactly. Exactly. Allie what have we got right now in terms of some of these things we've been watching with house

races. I'm also curious as to whether the election day same day vote is coming in in Texas Senate Democratic. We are getting some of that but since Stephanie's here, my old friend, I have a little pop quiz for you. South Kong, Meild. What do what? What do the Texas Rangers, the Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels in the New York Times have in common? New York Times? New York. Yeah, thanks. Thank you very much. I want to say, I want to say baseball.

It baseball, it was a particular player. It was a particular player. Mark DeShara has played for all of those teams. It was 75% of the voting in Texas 21, which is an interesting district because it's a sort of a suburb of Boston and a suburb of San Antonio and a whole lot of Texas. He has been called as the winner in that was 61% of the vote. Mark DeShara endorsed by Greg Abbott and endorsed by Donald Trump. And he will be the Republican candidate there in that district. Nice Stephanie. You win.

All right. Texas, why? 68% of the vote is in. Tolerico has 51. 52% to Jasmine Crockett's 47% again. You can see the day of vote is still scanned. 8 to 10% of the vote. Let's go to Tolerico's backyard Austin, Texas 72% of the vote is in there. He's got 76% of the vote so far. And you can see that of the day of vote. He's performing at about 17% of the total vote is day off for him. 16% for Jasmine Crockett. So the percentages

are very similar around there. Going through the state, you can still see Harris County Houston virtually no election day vote there. We already know that Dallas has no day of vote there. Fort Worth again, very little. So there's still a lot of day of vote to come in. Bear County, which is San Antonio has very little corpus Christi.

where it's more than a quarter. Sometimes 30 or 40%. But generally speaking, we're still missing

“a lot of day of vote here. But at the moment, 68% of the state is in. And as we are describing”

it, it's too early to call because there's just a lot of votes that we don't have there. In order for Jasmine Crockett to pull the head by the way, we'd have to see her overperform in Dallas. There are a lot of votes in Dallas. That's where she is likely to do the best. And she'd have to perform very well. She'd have to overperform her mail-in and advanced ballots on the day of voting. But it's entirely possible that she did. We just won't know.

And to be clear, the sort of breaking news that we just reported in conversation with the Dallas County elections administrator, I asked him directly when he thinks that day of votes for Dallas County will be counted. And he said he doesn't think until at least the early morning hour. So we're going to be looking at a long trail in terms of when those votes are coming in in Texas. All right, we got still much more ahead tonight. The night is young. We'll be right back

stay after this. One of the races that we've been watching is that potentially interesting house race is Texas's 15th congressional district. Now, this is a race that really shouldn't be within Democrats grasp in normal times. This is a district. I say that because Trump won this district by 18 points. It's represented by a Republican named Monica De La Cruz. This is a South Texas district.

But we do now have the results here. And this is a candidate who Democrats think might have an unusual sort of shot at the top here. Bobby Polito has been projected as the winner in Texas. Texas is 15th congressional district, which means that he will be the Democratic nominee for this seat in the fall. He's a Latin Grammy winner, a very famous Tejano musician, just running as a moderate Democrat. Again, this is a Trump plus 18 district, so it's interesting,

but Democrats sort of are pretty real high hopes on him, Jen. Let's bring 11 Smith a veteran observer of Texas politics with 30 years of experience. And he's now with the Atlantic.

“So I've mentioned this race a little bit earlier. I think he's such an interesting candidate”

because he's not a traditional political candidate. But you are an expert. Tell us a little bit about this district and about why he could give Democrats a shot. If you think that's the case. It's a huge outcome for the Democrats. He was a heavily recruited candidate. He speaks to a number of people in rural, heavily Hispanic communities who might not traditionally vote. Or they may have been the folks who voted for Trump and the Republicans last time after a long history of voting

Democratic previously. To the degree that part of the Democrats' calculation here is winning back Hispanic voters. They lost. They think Bobby Polito is their secret weapon. Again, rural conservative, Hispanic voters respond to this guy because of his non-traditional background. He's

been able to have conversations with people who never would have talked to a Democratic candidate.

It might never have seen a Democratic candidate in this district. Monica Delacruz, the incumbent, is one of those people who the Republicans thought they'd be able to get reelected pretty easily if the Democrats just took a pass on this race, but they actually have a real candidate now. As their standard bear and this will be a real race in the fall. And it could be the difference for Democrats. As they try to get the majority back in the U.S. House, this is one of those seats.

They could win. They have to win and in a Trump midterm, they may win.

“I followed this race a little bit, but I think it's interesting too because this positions don't”

seem to be all aligned traditionally with progressive Democrats or Democrats from Washington. He's been a little bit apolitical, but can you tell us a little bit more about his candidacy because it's not like an anti-Trump in an anti-Trump year. It's a lot more complex than that. He is not a culture war Democrat at all. He's talking about the economy, kitchen table issues, affordability, he's talking about public education, school vouchers passed in the last Texas

legislative session. So for the first time now, school vouchers are the law of Texas.

He has been campaigning against school vouchers for public education. He's making his whole candidacy about economic opportunity. And again, the economy was one of the reasons that many of those conservative Hispanics voters had a last election switched from Democrat to Republican. He is taking back that issue on behalf of the Democrats on behalf of his campaign. And so he is not running a traditional national Democratic Party playbook. He is staying very close to home.

He's speaking to the things that matter to the district. And it really, it begins and ends with the

Well, I talked to Republican consultants who are completely worried that polito is going to be

“the nominee in this race. Ada Quayar, who is an emergency room physician. By all accounts, a really”

good person and was a strong candidate in this race, the one who finished in second, they thought

they were going to run against her. They were very worried about polito possibly winning this race. And he did he won handily. And because of his name ID in these communities,

“among people again who don't traditionally vote. When he shows up in these rural counties,”

he draws enormous crowds. He did during the primary. They're worried about Bobby Polito.

Evan Smith, interesting race watch. Thank you so much. I got to say it's been great to have Evan Chair and Rosa and Jacob. And everybody we talking to from Texas to have Eugene and Simone talking to

“their sources and Texas has been really fascinating. So we continue to watch those. Senate,”

Democratic Senate, Senate, Democratic primary results come in from Texas. I should also tell you that a state senator apparently just came out at Tallarico headquarters in Texas and told people who are still there waiting on results that they should not go home. We don't know exactly what that means, but somebody just came out there and told people not to go home for us. We're not going home. Our coverage continues. I know my stance. Stay with us.

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