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Hundreds of residents urge Tarrant County commissioners to reject cuts to polling locations
Summary
Hundreds of speakers — students, veterans, voting-rights groups and local residents — told the Tarrant County Commissioners Court on Aug. 4 that a plan to reduce election-day polling locations would disproportionately burden students, seniors and working families and risk long lines in November.
Speakers packed the county courtroom and spillover rooms for hours on Aug. 4 to oppose an Elections Administration proposal to cut county election-day polling locations from several hundred toward roughly 176 sites.
"Voting is our most fundamental right," Representative Vicki Goodwin told the court. "…Going from over 300 polling locations on election day to a 176 is what I hear is proposed, seems illogical." Goodwin and dozens of other speakers — including Move Texas members, the League of Women Voters, the Texas Civil Rights Project and local NAACP leaders — said cuts would make voting harder for students, seniors, people with limited transportation and communities of color.
Organized groups presented numbers and local examples during the public-comment period, citing longer travel times and examples of multi-hour waits at some sites in the spring primary. Several speakers asked the court to postpone any final decision until the elections office releases its methodology, an equity analysis and a clear explanation of the cost savings. Carol Rayburn, a longtime elections worker, cited two-hour waits at a sub-courthouse during a recent primary and urged the court to restore campus sites such as UTA to the list.
Court members and the county’s elections administrator fielded repeated questions about the methodology used to propose the new site list. Commissioners said they wanted additional time to review community input and site availability before making final site approvals.
The court did not approve the recommended list on Aug. 4; instead it later agreed to table formal action on election-day and early-vote sites to allow time for more review and possible additions (see related article on the precinct-combining vote and tabling).
