Fort Worth resident Cecil Wilson typically votes early in local elections. That was her plan this year when she went to her usual polling location in the Historic Southside.
But when she arrived at the Southside Community Center last month, she couldn’t cast a ballot as the center was no longer a polling location for early voting, she said. Rather than seek a new location, Wilson returned to the center first thing in the morning on Election Day to cast a ballot.
The 80-year-old is among almost 1.3 million registered voters across Tarrant County, many of whom found their usual early voting locations shuttered as a result of Tarrant County commissioners’ reducing the number of such sites.
But despite the reduction, Tuesday’s election saw considerably higher voter turnout compared to previous odd-year elections, with a little more than 17% of registered voters casting ballots. Statewide, 16% of registered voters participated in the election.
“Everybody’s seeing, especially maybe with the government shutdown and stuff, that maybe it’s important to show up,” said Janet Mattern, president of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to increasing voter participation.
Odd-year elections, such as Tuesday’s, typically see low turnout compared to presidential and midterm elections. The past three odd-year elections saw an average of 11.9% of registered Tarrant County voters participate.
In August, county commissioners used an expected low turnout as a reason to cut over 100 Election Day voting sites and nine early voting locations. County Judge Tim O’Hare argued then that the reduction was to save $1 million on what would be an election most didn’t know about.
“I would venture to guess 99% of the public cannot name a single thing on (the 2025 ballot),” O’Hare said at the time. The move was criticized by Democratic commissioners and some residents, who said it amounted to voter suppression targeting minorities in the city’s urban core.
Republican County Commissioner Matt Krause said he “absolutely” stands by his vote to reduce the number of polling sites, especially after seeing the high voter turnout. He said he’s “willing to listen to that feedback” if any voters were unable to cast ballots because of the reduction but, as of Wednesday, his office had not recorded any such complaints.
“It only reinforces that those votes (to reduce) those polling sites … was good for the county because it saved money, but it also allowed everybody who wanted to vote to vote,” Krause said Wednesday.
Next year’s elections will include multiple statewide and countywide seats, including governor and U.S. Senate plus the county judge. Krause said he anticipates the county approving a list of voting sites that includes more locations than this year’s election, but probably fewer than previous elections with statewide offices on the ballot.
Neither O’Hare nor Republican Commissioner Manny Ramirez, who supported the reduction in polling places, returned requests for comment on voter turnout Wednesday.
Tuesday included a special election for Texas Senate District 9, which covers much of Tarrant County, at the top of the ballot, above 17 constitutional amendments.
A little over half of the Tarrant County participants in this election cast ballots for the three Senate candidates: Fort Worth Democrat Taylor Rehmet and Southlake Republicans John Huffman and Leigh Wambsganss. Rehmet and Wambsganss are heading to a runoff election in January.
Mattern said she was “shocked” to see as many people as she did lining up to vote at the Southwest Subcourthouse where she was working the polls. Other polling locations, such as North Richland Hills Library, saw lines with over an hour wait time.
“When you have fewer poll locations, people tend to go to the places where they know that there will be a poll location,” Mattern said. “They don’t go to the obscure areas because they don’t want to drive all day to try to find places.”
Allison Campolo, chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, said the unusually high voter turnout was the result of grassroots organizing from various political groups including her party, the Tarrant County Young Democrats, political action committees, the Texas Democratic Party and other counties’ party chapters.
“Obviously, the work paid off,” Campolo said Wednesday morning.
Despite “pleasantly surprising” voter engagement, Campolo maintains that county commissioners “without a question” disenfranchised voters by reducing early voting sites.
She said the Democratic Party fielded countless calls throughout early voting and on Election Day from voters who realized their usual polling location wasn’t available.
“Cynically, my only hope is that the Republicans see how badly their candidates did yesterday and realize that closing polling locations is not good for them either,” Campolo said. “It did not result in a good political outcome for them.”
Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French did not return a request for comment. On election night and throughout the day Nov. 5, he posted several times on social media about the New York City mayoral election that resulted in the city’s first Muslim mayor but did not post directly about Tarrant County election results.
Krause believes the “very heated and expensive” state Senate race “got the attention and got people excited and enthusiastic,” which led to high voter turnout.
“I don’t think the voter turnout and voting sites necessarily had any correlation to each other,” Krause said.
Like Wilson, Fort Worth resident Kerry Thomas cast a ballot at the Southside Community Center the morning of Election Day. The 63-year-old said he usually votes early but didn’t get a chance this year, so cutting the center as an early voting site didn’t impact his voting experience.
Nothing would have stopped him from casting a ballot, he said, stressing the importance of voting.
“It’s just a crucial time around the world, and a lot of things are going on in Texas. A lot of things (are) going on in Tarrant County,” Thomas said. “Some are good, some are bad, some are bullies, and some are not.”
Fort Worth resident Alan Brown, 41, said the reduction in polling sites didn’t impact his voting experience after casting a ballot at the Riverside Community Center, where he typically votes in his neighborhood. Still, he said, he was aware of the reduction and made sure to encourage others to double-check their polling site and make a plan to vote.
“When I was younger, I didn’t vote as regularly,” Brown said. “I was probably a little more vocal with the younger people I know to make sure to push them, ‘Hey, go figure out where you need to go and go do it.’”
Voter participation was particularly higher in northeast Tarrant County, which hosted a disproportionate number of early voting locations compared to other quadrants. The area is home to Southlake, a suburb where both Republican Texas Senate candidates are residents.
Mattern guessed the Senate race was a driver of increased turnout in the north. But ultimately, she suspects most people came for the constitutional amendments, all of which passed.
“They would not be deterred,” she said, recalling long voting lines across the county on Election Day. “‘No, we will not leave this line. We will not go to another poll location. We are going to vote because it’s important.’ That’s what I kept hearing.”
Keller resident Carson West, 67, said changing voter demographics could impact voter turnout and results in Tarrant County. He noted that older residents like himself typically vote conservative, while younger residents and people moving to Texas from liberal states like California generally tend to vote less conservative.
“If older people die (and) newer people move in that have liberal tendencies, it could turn purple or blue in the next 10 years, easily,” West said, standing outside the Keller Town Hall after voting Nov. 4.
To him, a blue Tarrant County would be “horrible.” West said he expects shifting from a red to blue political makeup would lead to detrimental long-term impacts, such as higher property taxes, while there probably wouldn’t be much short-term change.
To Keller resident Arisha Morris, 64, a blue shift would lead to needed change in Tarrant County, though she’s not confident the county will see that shift any time soon.
“I have to say it’s stuck red — because this is Texas,” Morris said after voting at the Keller Town Hall on Election Day. “It would have to take a lot more people that have a mindset like I do.”
Morris said she has voted in all local elections since about 2016, when she started “paying attention to what’s been going on in the world.”
Cecilia Lenzen and Drew Shaw are government accountability reporters for the Fort Worth Report. Contact them at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org and drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org.
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