Election headlines

Recent headlines: Dallas Morning News, Wednesday, “Hundreds of Voters Turned Away at Polls” and ”Residents frustrated after being redirected to their assigned sites.”

The Texas Tribune, Wednesday, “In Dallas County, frustration and confusion after GOP forces switch to precinct-based voting.”

VoteBeat Texas, Tuesday, “Primary voters frustrated and confused after Dallas County switches to precinct-based voting.”

All this despite the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court spending $1 million on a voter outreach campaign to alert voters to the changes.

Thanks, Dallas County Republicans, you’ve wasted our time and money!

Kimberly Farrar, Richardson

An egregious fraud

Having recently voted in the 2026 Texas primary elections, I should feel a degree of satisfaction for meeting my civic duty and my obligation as a U.S. citizen. Why is it that I feel as if I am perpetuating an egregious fraud?

The rules governing this election obligate me to declare that I am either a Democrat or a Republican before I am allowed to participate. I am neither. What are my options?

I can play along, pick a side and vote for the candidates on my ballot that I truly support while being unable to express that same support for other candidates because their names do not appear. Or I can join the vast majority of my fellow citizens and choose not to participate at all.

I was always taught that in a democracy, elections are fair and free. How can elections be considered fair when (by rule) the names of half of the candidates are not even on my ballot?

May the best candidate win, even if I was never given the chance to vote for him/her.

Wayne Hardey, northwest Dallas/Disney Streets

Needs more transparency

Re: “City Hall debate is a rerun of AAC debacle — We need to slow down, insist on transparency and get this right,” by Laura Miller, Wednesday Opinion.

Laura Miller is right about everything! There isn’t enough transparency about the deal with City Hall. The iconic building is unique and one of a kind and should be repaired and preserved.

I.M. Pei personally mixed the concrete to a specific color to appear warm in the Texas sun. The city council should be ashamed of allowing the building to get into such bad shape.

Paul Taylor, Dallas/Oak Lawn

No Cowboys Stadium in Dallas

If my memory serves, Laura Miller singlehandedly quashed Jerry Jones’ desire to build Cowboys Stadium in downtown Dallas. The tremendous benefits Dallas residents would have received were innumerable, and it would have enhanced property values in an area that desperately needed that.

I find it ironic that Miller is opining on anything related to building in Dallas.

Michael DeMott, Frisco

Laura Miller had the right idea

I grew up in Plano, and I live in Richardson now, so I’ve been observing Dallas up close for nearly seven decades. One thing that sticks out is that Dallas is really good at building glitzy shiny structures, but it’s not good at taking care of them.

I read about City Hall, the futuristic building built in 1978 that is becoming unusable largely due to lack of maintenance. Now, they are trying to decide if the building is worth saving, or do they need to build yet another. They build designer bridges, but can’t fix streets and can’t replace aging water lines.

One of the things I learned in business is to make sure what you have is right and is working properly before branching out into new ventures. It’s that way with infrastructure.

Infrastructure isn’t glamorous, but we certainly notice when it fails. It’s crucial to a modern city.

Years ago, Miller ran for mayor partly on a platform of fixing Dallas’ aging infrastructure. She was ridiculed as the “pothole mayor.” I think she had the right idea.

Steven Ritchey, Richardson

Not a fan of Texas Ranger statue

Re: “’One Riot, One Ranger’ statue finds new home — Sculpture removed from Love Field in 2020 now at Globe Life Field,” Tuesday Metro & Business story.

As a 50-year fan of the Texas Rangers baseball club, I was extremely disappointed to learn of the relocation of the banished Texas Ranger statue to Globe Life Field. The statue was removed from Love Field for the systemic racist history it represents, as the Rangers are well known for abusing minorities, especially the Mexican-American communities.

Given the ongoing ICE raids and roundups of anyone who looks brown or black, the statue’s new location at the ballpark is questionable at best and insulting at worst to the large Latino fan base the Ranger baseball team enjoys.

The public relations office really struck out with this boneheaded idea. They should have read some Texas history or the book, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.

Tony Torres, Garland

Love letter to Dallas

My most perfect day. I was high up in the mountains and came upon a green pasture filled with wildflowers, including beautiful columbines. There on my left was a worn-down home and Aspen trees, glittering silver to green in the cool gentle wind. And on the ridge before me was a full-grown porcupine just wandering across, coming from the Aspens and heading to the snowcapped mountains. I was 14 and it was a perfect day, time and moment.

Hold unto these moments. You never know when they can come around. The summer days lumbered on, like the porcupine, but way too quick, it was back to school. Back to W. T. White among my friends.

I miss my youth in Dallas. Times in the creek on hot summer days. Crawling under the wired fence to watch Jesuit High School games, a snowball fight with Dallas police and so much more.

This is my love letter to Dallas.

James K. Waghorne, Wichita Falls

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.

If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com

Among the many surprises in Tuesday’s primaries, one of the most shocking took place in the Democratic primary for Dallas County district attorney. Amber Givens, a former district court judge with a history of injudicious behavior on the bench, handily beat incumbent John Creuzot, whose leadership and experience in office earned the respect of a wide array of legal and community leaders.

We had expected that Democratic voters would want to retain a public servant who performed his job with diligence and integrity. Creuzot championed innovative, evidence-based programs to address the needs of suspects with mental illness and substance abuse problems.

Instead they elevated someone whose ability to do the job is an open question.

So what happened? We don’t know.

Were primary voters just uninformed about the vast difference in experience and qualifications? Were they most concerned with the races at the top of the ticket, while ignoring lower ballot races? Judicial and county races often get short shrift.

Maybe voters viewed Givens as the more progressive of the two candidates, and preferred her politics. Long ago, Creuzot did run for judge as a Republican.

But as a Democratic district attorney, he’s been a favorite target of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Early in his first term, Creuzot announced his office wouldn’t prosecute low-level theft of basic necessities, partly to keep impoverished, nonviolent offenders out of jail. He later dropped the policy when he found it had little impact on the crime rate. Creuzot also joined several other big-city DAs and sued Paxton after his office tried to impose onerous reporting requirements on local jurisdictions. The DAs won.

Meanwhile, before her victory, Givens was in the news for all the wrong reasons.

In June, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct publicly admonished her for “failing to comply with and maintain professional competence in the law,” in regards to due process and for failing to treat a defendant with “patience, dignity and courtesy.” Givens was also publicly reprimanded for allegedly allowing a court staff member to substitute for her during a virtual bond hearing and for mistreating attorneys in her courtroom. She appealed the rulings and a three-judge panel in Austin re-tried the case late last month but has not yet issued its verdict.

Givens’ campaign website said the incumbent DA’s office denied evidence was missing for some felony cases. In fact, the Dallas Police Department had lost track of or deleted digital files that the DA’s office didn’t know existed. Even highly professional prosecutors and judges can be stymied by failures in other parts of the criminal justice system.

Her first news conference as DA-elect (there is no opposition in November) revealed few specifics about how she plans to run her new office. Givens emphasized that she was vastly outspent by Creuzot, which is true. She wants to establish community justice councils and set strict deadlines to decide whether to seek an indictment in cases of all types. Neither sounds realistic.

We have to hope for the best, but the record here convinces us Dallas County Democratic voters got this race as wrong as any we can recall.

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here.

If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com