Angry, hurt and targeted. That’s how voters in some of Tarrant County’s heavily Black, Hispanic and low-income neighborhoods said they feel after learning that polling places in their communities are being cut.
“I’m voting with my anger this November,” said Patrick Banta, 50, who said he has put political signs in his yard for the first time, all of them for Democrats. He said he was fueled by resentment over Republicans’ attempt at “voter suppression” and that he could never vote for a Republican now — likening his reaction to the party to “roaches on Raid.”
Earlier this month, the Republican-led Tarrant County Commissioners Court, which governs the northern Texas county that includes Fort Worth and Arlington, voted to cut the number of Election Day polling places from 316 in the 2022 midterm elections to 224 for this November — a reduction of nearly 30%. Over that same time period, the county’s population and its number of registered voters have grown. Supporters of the cuts have cited taxpayer savings and low turnout at some locations.
Most of the reductions came in the county’s two largest cities — Fort Worth lost 40 polling places and Arlington lost 22 — but smaller towns lost sites, too.
But in some areas, word for the cuts doesn’t appear to have spread.
Most voters MS NOW spoke with didn’t know their usual polling places were eliminated, including in Fort Worth’s 76119 ZIP code, where two-thirds of the polling places were slashed.
Among them was Lashaun Williams, 54, who is Black and uses a wheelchair. She said she feels her community is being targeted.
“It actually hurts,” Williams said. “I don’t think it’s right.”
According to Census Bureau data, nearly 90% of the residents in her ZIP code are Hispanic, Black or Asian; a fifth live in poverty; and nearly 11% of households don’t have access to a car — Williams among them. She said the cuts are part of what’s motivating her not only to vote, but to support Democrats up and down the ticket.
The three Republicans who voted to approve the cuts also redrew the commissioner precinct map last year in a way that increased their chances of securing an additional Republican seat on the court. Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare, a Republican who presides over the court, said as much at a Sept. 1 meeting, where the polling cuts were discussed.
“We did it to have a majority Republican Commissioners Court,” O’Hare said.
O’Hare and the court’s two other Republicans did not respond when MS NOW asked whether cutting polling places was another way to gerrymander in their party’s favor.
The political stakes are high in this historically Republican county. Earlier this year, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election for Texas Senate District 9, which includes a large swath of the county’s most Republican territory and which President Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024. The upset made national headlines and served as a wake-up call for Republicans heading into the midterms.
One of the criteria for drawing the new polling map, according to a presentation by the county elections administrator at the Sept. 1 meeting, was avoiding locating sites next to one another.
Yet MS NOW found two polling places across the street from each other in a majority-White ZIP code in Precinct 2, the commissioner precinct Republicans are trying to flip.
“It’s very simple, this is a Republican neighborhood,” said a Democrat who has lived in the area for 50 years and who wished not to be identified out of fear of reprisal.
Two Republicans in the neighborhood agreed that the area is deep red, though signs for Democrats James Talarico, the party’s U.S. Senate nominee, and Gina Hinojosa, its nominee for governor, dotted some lawns near the two polling sites. Like Banta, the longtime resident said they had put up Democratic yard signs for the first time in their life and are eager to vote.
Neither the Republican commissioners nor the elections administrator responded to questions about why the two sites sit across the street from each other.
Students lost polling places, too. Four early-voting sites on college campuses were eliminated: one each at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of North Texas Health Science Center, and two at Tarrant County College campuses. For thousands of students, that means losing a polling place that was convenient during the 2022 midterms.
“It’s voter suppression,” said Angel Espinoza, a UT Arlington student who said the cuts have made him even more determined to vote, and to vote for Democrats. Still, Espinoza said, it’s the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, which he called extreme, that have his Republican family leaning toward Democrats this fall, including Talarico.
The contrast between two of the county’s universities is stark.
UT Arlington, which serves 42,000 students and is majority-minority, sits in the precinct Republicans are trying to flip. Besides losing its early-voting site, it isn’t on the list of Election Day sites either. The nearest polling place is 1.2 miles away by car, or a 26-minute walk, according to Google Maps.
“I’m still mind blown from that,” said Audrey Watkins, a UT Arlington student who lives on campus and doesn’t own a car. Students are strapped for time and money, she said, and the added hurdle only makes her want to vote even more.
Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, meanwhile, was added as an Election Day site. TCU, which has about 13,000 students and is majority-white, is in a precinct with a Republican commissioner up for re-election.
In statements to MS NOW, UTA said it was willing to serve as a polling place but wasn’t asked to this cycle. TCU said it has regularly served as an early-voting site and will participate on Election Day this year, though county polling site lists show it was not a polling place during early voting or on Election Day in 2022.
The Republicans on the commissioners court and the elections administrator did not respond to questions about why the campus early-voting sites were dropped and TCU was added.
Late Tuesday, the Arlington City Council passed a resolution highlighting the importance of the UT Arlington voting location for students and faculty and urging county commissioners to restore the UTA polling site. The measure also offers voters free rides to polling places free of charge, an effort that dates back to at least 2019.
The moves are pushing some Republican-leaning UTA students away from the GOP. Danniellie Holman said that the more extreme Republicans become, the more she finds herself leaning toward Democrats.
“As further extreme the red goes, I start leaning a little bit more towards the blue,” she said.
Back on his porch, beside his Rehmet and Talarico lawn signs, Banta was still fuming.
“Closing the polling places was just the cherry on top,” he said. Like many of the voters MS NOW met who live near eliminated polling sites, he’s ready to vote Democratic in November.
With the midterms just weeks away, the results will show whether Rehmet’s win was an anomaly or a warning for Republicans, even as they redraw political boundaries to their advantage and cut polling places.
“I hope he [Rehmet] was the first domino in the whole Democratic wave,” Banta said.
The post ‘I’m voting with my anger’: Cuts to polling places spark backlash in a GOP-run Texas county appeared first on MS NOW.
