What's on the Ballot: Cooke County's Nov. 3 Election

Cooke County voters will fill county offices on Nov. 3, and inside the Valley View school district they will also decide a tax-rate measure the school board ordered onto the ballot Aug. 17. Registration closes Oct. 5, and early in-person voting runs Oct. 19 through Oct. 30 at the Courthouse Annex on South Dixon Street in Gainesville, according to the county's early voting schedule.

Gov. Greg Abbott set the statewide date by proclamation Aug. 10, the Texas Register shows. The county's order of election puts county judge, county court at law judge, district clerk, county clerk and county treasurer on the ballot, along with Commissioners Court seats in Precincts 2 and 4 and justice of the peace seats in Precincts 1 and 2. Mail-ballot applications must reach Early Voting Clerk Pam Harrison at 101 S. Dixon St., Room 108, by Oct. 23, the same order says.

Inside Valley View ISD, voters will decide Proposition A, the district's voter-approval tax-rate election. The ballot asks whether the district may levy a total rate of about 88 cents per $100 of taxable value, and the ballot text calls that a tax increase, one worth roughly $6,600 more for day-to-day operations than the district collected the year before. The mix shifted more than the total did. Against the rate the state comptroller reported for Valley View in 2025, the operating share rises while the debt share falls, leaving the proposed total below last year's rate, below the statewide median in the comptroller's 2025 school-district file and below what Gainesville and Muenster ISDs levied.

The Texas Education Agency says the operating portion pays for maintenance and operations and the debt portion covers payments on facilities. Comptroller guidance makes the vote automatic: a district adopting a rate above its voter-approval rate must send it to voters on the November uniform date, and rejection leaves it unable to adopt a rate above that limit. The board approved the election order Aug. 17, the order says. Valley View held a public meeting the same day on its proposed 2026-27 budget and tax rate, and the board agenda that day listed action on the proposed rate, the election order and a joint-election agreement.

The district last came to its voters in November 2025 with a $65 million bond it said answered enrollment projected to nearly double by 2035. County results show it failed, roughly 60 percent against.

Valley View's tax election will not use countywide polling places, so those voters must go to their assigned precinct: Cross Timbers Church for Precinct 10, Valley View Baptist Church for Precinct 11, Era Community Center for Precinct 12. The county's Election Day list runs to 15 sites, from the Muenster VFW to Moss Lake Fire Station, with judges and alternates appointed by Commissioners Court.

Era ISD will hold no board election. Its candidates were certified unopposed, and the district declared James Eaton, Rebecca Reed, Blake Branch and Samantha Freeman elected. Countywide turnout last November was about one in five registered voters.