Texas's Third-Largest County Cuts 92 Election Day Polling Places Nine Weeks Before the Midterms — Three Republicans Outvote Two Democrats After Eight Hours and More Than 100 Speakers, and a Commissioner Calls It a "Modern Day Poll Tax"
On September 1, 2026 the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to run the November midterms with 224 Election Day polling places — 92 fewer than the 316 the county used in the 2022 midterms. County Judge Tim O'Hare and Commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez, all Republicans, voted yes. Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr., both Democrats, voted no. Tarrant County is the third-largest county in Texas and the largest urban county in the state that Republicans still control. It is also the county Democrats have spent a decade trying to flip. The vote came at the end of a meeting that ran more than eight hours and heard from more than 100 speakers, most of them opposed, with voting-rights advocates and representatives of some 30 civic groups rallying outside the courthouse that morning. Fort Worth's City Council had unanimously asked the county in August to reconsider the reductions and to distribute whatever sites remained fairly across the county. The Republican majority defended the consolidation as an efficiency and staffing decision — O'Hare said no Tarrant County voter should ever feel short of time to vote, and Krause called the demand for a specific number of sites arbitrary. Democrats on the court and James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, cast it as a deliberate narrowing of access: Miles told the majority they were creating "modern day poll taxes," and Simmons said the decision was "not about cost" but "about power."
“The last thing I want to see is anybody removed from the chambers. The last thing I want to see is anybody arrested. The last thing I want to see is a circus.”