AP offers this very interesting report, which begins: “Officials in two Houston-area elections recently manipulated polling locations to clear the path for their supporters to vote and to toss numerous roadblocks before their opponents. Sponsors of a local community college bond election tried last year to put all their polling locations on their campuses, making voting easy for students and employees — a natural support base — but less convenient for opponents. That move prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to step in, and the election was postponed. And officials with a suburban school district scheduled their bond election on the same day as the state’s general election in November — and then spent $64,000 extra to set up separate polling places. State law would normally bar such a move, but a large loophole allows such maneuvers in the Houston area only.”
UPDATE: See page 3 of this paper [link corrected] by Hans Von Spakovsky, which suggests this practice may go back in Texas to 1997 or earlier.