This Texas county cut 92 Election Day sites. What Black voters need to know
(ABNN) - Tarrant County voters will have 92 fewer places to cast a ballot on Election Day this November than they had during the last midterm election.
Our ABNN special report goes beyond those numbers to examine who will carry the burden and why Black voters in Fort Worth say they have seen this kind of barrier before.
The Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to approve 224 Election Day vote centers for more than 1.3 million registered voters. The county had 316 during the 2022 midterm election. The court's three Republican members supported the plan. Its two Democratic members opposed it.
Tarrant County uses countywide vote centers, allowing registered voters to cast a ballot at any open Election Day location in the county. That means the issue is not whether voters can cast a ballot. It is how far they may have to travel, whether they have transportation and who carries the burden when fewer locations are available.
More than 100 people signed up to speak as the commissioners considered the plan. The meeting lasted more than eight hours, and most of the speakers included in our ABNN report urged the court to reject it.
"The suppression game you are playing with the voice of the people is a travesty. You are attempting to silence Black, brown, and young voices. You know exactly what you're doing, and so do we," one speaker told commissioners. "What are you afraid of? Why are y'all so hell-bent on limiting voter access to the ballot box? Let's just tell the truth and shame the devil. This court is obviously afraid of Black and brown voters."
Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. held up a poll tax receipt that belonged to his wife's great-grandmother. He said she raised 10 children and still paid for a right that already belonged to her.
"The government is by the people and for the people. That's everybody. The people who have cars, the people who got money for bus fare, and the ones who don't," Miles said. "They all need to have the ability to vote. That's a fundamental right. This is not about money. This is not about fiscal responsibility. This is about access."
Our report also follows that history from the commissioners meeting to East Rosedale Street and Fort Worth's historic South Side, once the center of Black life in the city.
At the Fort Worth/Tarrant County Branch of the NAACP, branch President Estella Williams said the consequences will also reach Latino, low-income and other communities already facing barriers to the ballot.
County officials said the decision was about costs and consolidating voting locations. Williams sees the reduction as part of a much older pattern.
"To me today what we see is just another rehearsal of what was back then," Williams told The American Black News Network. "It's just different bodies that's in place, different forms that they're using to do it, but it has the same kind of effect."
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