Primary Election Time
Check Your Polling Place | Rage Against the Machines
Primary Election Day is Tuesday, March 3. A few ballot recommendations for you can be found here.
In addition to the races, there are propositions on each party’s ballot which serve as an opinion polls. While the results have no legal force, they sure are interesting. South Carolina and Georgia are the only other two states that do this fun thing.
A couple of Irving connections on the ballot:
Perennial candidate Tony Grimes is running for Dallas County Clerk in the Democratic Primary. The County Clerk is the primary custodian of county records. Grimes is not the nicest fellow though.
In the Congressional primary for CD-6 (see our overview of Irving congressional districts here), Irving native Brian Stahl (see our interview here) is running against the incumbent Jake Ellzey.
There are probably on 4 or 5 people in the entire state of Texas who really understand how primary elections work. They are complicated.
Check your location before you go vote: the locations are on this PDF (you need to know your precinct number, which can be found here based on party: Democratic Primary election locations start on page 5, Republican Primary election locations on page 29).
Why two locations? Because the Democrats and Republicans are holding two separate primaries.
This has not happened for a few cycles.
In the last few primaries the parties held joint primaries, which simplified things. But after Allen West was elected Dallas County GOP Chair two years ago — defeating incumbent Jennifer Stoddard-Hajdu with 70% of the vote — the County Executive Committee (consisting of all the GOP precinct chairs) voted to hold a separate Republican primary for this election. They wanted to restore party control and avoid all the conflicts with Democratic election workers.
They also wanted to push for election integrity. In addition to ending countywide voting, using paper ballots that are hand counted is the gold standard. For anyone who is aware of the problems with voting machines, a shift to paper ballots is a necessity:
When a party runs its own primary, it enters into a contract for election services with the county elections administrator. Up until August, the Elections Administrator in Dallas County was Heider Garcia.
Garcia’s background is interesting.
Born to Venezuelan parents, he spent much of his early life in Venezuela. He graduated from university there with a degree in computer engineering in 2003, and began his career there as a software developer for the voting machine company Smartmatic, working for them for 12 years.
Garcia came to the US to serve as Elections Administrator first in California for a couple years, and then in Tarrant County from February 2018 to June 2023. What happened in our neighboring county — the largest red county in the country, where Trump had won in 2016 by 9 points — under Garcia? Tarrant flipped blue in the 2018 US Senate race and went blue again in the 2020 election, with Biden edging out Trump. A 9-point leftward shift in 4 years.
On the November 21, 2025 episode of Going Rogue, journalist Lara Logan interviewed Ralph Pezzullo, the author of the book Stolen Elections.
Lara Logan: And that’s what you document in this book is how it started in Venezuela and yes, it’s spread to the United States, but they have stolen elections all over the world.
Ralph Pezzullo: Yes, that’s correct.
Lara Logan: In fact, there’s that famous video on YouTube of the Philippines Parliament, when they excoriate a man called Heider Garcia, who’s an employee of Smartmatic.
Ralph Pezzullo: Yes, that’s correct.
Lara Logan: And they know that their election has been stolen. They know Smartmatic is responsible. And I mean, that guy sits there and he gets beaten-up by the parliament in the Philippines and then they banish him, right? They kick him out of the country. And where does he go? He ends up in Tarrant County, Texas, right?
Gary Berntsen: Forward, Texas. He’s the Election Commissioner!
Lara Logan: Yes, he’s the Election Commissioner.
Gary Berntsen: Then, he moved to Dallas and now, he’s the President of Hart InterCivic, I believe.
Here’s the clip out of the Philippines:
Garcia resigned from his position in Dallas in August.
Paul Adams took over for him in October 2025, coming from running elections in Lorain County, Ohio (population 325,000). The Dallas GOP made a valiant effort to show that a secure primary election could be run with paper ballots, hand counted. They were unable to get an acceptable contract from the county this time around to make it happen.
Separate primaries is movement in the right direction, however. The paper ballots, hand counted initiative has momentum. Many volunteers signed up to help couth with a tested “ECHO method.” It was an inspiring project led by heroes like Dr. Preeti Malladi, and one that must continue. Citizen volunteers need to take over and run our elections. There’s few things more important than this.
Happy voting!
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