Welp.
Republican officials in a major battleground Texas county voted Tuesday to slash Election Day polling locations by 30% for the November midterm elections.
Under the new plan, Tarrant County will have 224 Election Day voting locations, down from 316 in the 2022 midterms. It will also have 47 early voting locations, down from 50.
The county commissioners approved the early voting and Election Day location plans in separate 3-2 votes. County Judge Tim O’Hare and Commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez voted in favor of both plans, while Commissioners Roderick Miles Jr. and Alisa Simmons voted against them.
The Republican majority also rejected amendments that would have restored polling locations at the University of Texas at Arlington and the Northeast and South campuses of Tarrant County College. Another amendment seeking to restore dozens of Election Day locations also failed 2-3.
Outraged Tarrant County voters showed up at Tuesday’s county commissioners meeting in force, more than filling two overflow rooms and holding signs with a clear message about the Republican local officials who supported the plan: “Vote them out.”
“We are making national headlines for all the wrong reasons this week,” Tarrant County resident Brooke Whittaker told county leaders. “Ordinary citizens should not have to come down here and explain to you why making it harder to vote is a bad idea, but here we are.”
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State Rep. Chris Turner (D) blasted GOP county leaders for closing polls, particularly at the University of Texas at Arlington and Bethlehem Baptist Church.
“Stripping a major university of its polling site is not a neutral decision,” Turner said in a letter posted on social media. “It is a deliberate barrier placed in front of young voters, first-time voters, and voters who already face disproportionate obstacles to civic participation.”
“Equally unacceptable is the proposed elimination of Bethlehem Baptist Church, a site that opened in 2024 and has since become a model of community engagement,” Turner went on. “From 2024 to 2026, Bethlehem Baptist Church more than tripled its voter turnout, a clear sign that when communities are given accessible, trusted locations, they show up.”
Kayla Gillespie, a student at the University of Texas at Arlington, spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, imploring leaders to keep the campus polling site open.
“Accessibility is one of the biggest factors when it comes to young voters,” she said.
During the debate, Simmons read from an email in which a UTA official said the university was “happy to accommodate early voting and day-of voting at the Maverick Activity Center.” Election Administrator Clint Ludwig said he did not receive final confirmation from the university until the Saturday before the vote.
Simmons argued that sending students to another location ignored the practical burden involved. “You expect the student to walk a mile to the Arlington sub-courthouse,” she said. “You walk a mile and it’s going to take you about 45 minutes each way, and you’ve got class to get back to.”
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Voters did not appear to be persuaded by GOP officials’ claims that the cuts were motivated by financial constraints.
“You tell us this is about efficiency and saving our tax dollars,” Tarrant County voter Laney Hawes told officials. “I’d love to know what you all think our tax dollars are for. They are to serve us and I can’t think of a better use of taxpayer money than to encourage and support the democratic process.”
Simmons said an analysis of the adopted list showed that the quarter of Tarrant County ZIP codes with the lowest poverty rates would lose about 15% of their Election Day locations, while the quarter with the highest poverty rates would lose about 41%.
Miles compared the new barriers to the poll taxes imposed on earlier generations of voters, holding up the poll-tax receipt belonging to his wife’s great-grandmother, Maggie McCain.
“She was willing to suffer the indignity of having to pay a poll tax for a right that belonged to her,” he said. “What we are doing with reducing polling locations is instituting barriers to making access to voting for people. It’s modern-day poll taxes.”
Voters were furious when county leaders initially considered a plan last month that would have cut almost half of the Election Day polls and closed eight early voting sites, including some on college campuses.
But Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare (R), who leads the county government, will have to face those voters himself in November. He decided to postpone the final vote to Sept. 1 to add more locations.
O’Hare has drawn a serious challenger in his re-election bid: Democratic County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, whose district was dismantled by a mid-decade gerrymander O’Hare spearheaded last year. Simmons has called the voting location closures a “deliberate act to reduce voter access.”
During Tuesday’s debate, Simmons said the cuts were about political control rather than saving money.
“What you have not heard today is anything about cost,” she said. “This is not about cost. This is about power.”
Sure seems hard to justify cutting by almost a third the voting locations in a growing county. But that’s what the Republican majority on Tarrant County Commissioners Court have done. I don’t think they will achieve their objective, I think they just made a lot of people mad, but some lessons have to be learned the hard way. And of course we wouldn’t be dealing with any of this if we still had an intact Voting Rights Act, because this would have had to survive preclearance first. Add it to the list of reasons why an even stronger VRA needs to be brought back. The Fort Worth Report, the Trib, and Lone Star Left have coverage from the meeting, and NOTUS and MS Now have more.
Stay angry Tarrant County voters. You have the opportunity to demonstrate negative consequences for rat-fuckery.