Tarrant County commissioners voted to reduce the number of Election Day and early voting polling locations.
Commissioners approved 47 early voting locations and 224 Election Day voting locations by a 3-2 vote during the Sept. 1 meeting. County Judge Tim O’Hare, Precinct 3 Commissioner Matt Krause and Precinct 4 Commissioner Manny Ramirez voted to approve the locations, while Precinct 2 Commissioner Alisa Simmons and Precinct 1 Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. voted against the motion.
The details
Since tabling the consideration at the Aug. 4 meeting, county elections staff added more locations from 176 to 224. However, the 224 Election Day polling locations is a 29.11% decrease from the 316 Election Day polling locations used for the 2022 midterm election.
Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clinton Ludwig said county staff reached out to polling locations that were used in the 2022 midterm elections and locations used in 2024 but not in 2022. When staff reached out, there were 210 locations that are no longer able to host voting, refused to remain a polling location, did not respond or have been replaced with a nearby site, Ludwig said.
County elections staff created a preliminary list of 269 polling locations, Ludwig added, but reduced the final list to 224 to maintain a balanced number of polling locations by precinct and avoid having sites too close to one another.
Similarly, the number of early voting sites grew from 42 to 47 since August, but it is still below the 50 used for the 2022 midterm election.
Tarrant County has 1.33 million registered voters, according to county data.
What they’re saying
Simmons said there is a need to add more early voting locations and questioned why county staff did not account for recent upticks in voter turnout when presenting polling locations.
“We know 40,000 more people voted in the primary, and Senate District 9 was off the charts,” Simmons said referring to voter turnout. “Why would we not plan for that?”
O’Hare said previous elections had an imbalance of polling locations in certain precincts.
“What we had before was a situation where we had 93 locations in Precinct 1 for Election Day and there were only 70 in Precinct 4,” O’Hare said.
What else?
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 3 election is Oct. 5. Early voting will run from Oct. 19-30, and Election Day is Nov. 3.
