James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, is mobilizing against Tarrant County’s plan to close 92 polling places before November’s midterms, arguing the closures will suppress voter turnout in predominantly Black and Latino communities around Fort Worth and Arlington. The Commissioners Court is set to vote Tuesday on whether to proceed with shuttering nearly a third of the county’s polling locations from the 2022 election. Tarrant County represents one of Texas’s most crucial swing regions, and if Democrats are to flip the Senate this cycle, the path almost certainly runs through the Lone Star State, where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994. Talarico, who currently leads Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in most polls, framed the closures as an effort by powerful interests to make voting harder for everyday Texans.
Republican officials defend the closures as a cost-saving measure rather than a political calculation, with state Rep. Matt Shaheen dismissing voter suppression concerns as a “silly accusation.” Yet the historical record tells a different story. In 2024, Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare attempted to remove early voting sites from college campuses, a move the county GOP chairman explicitly called “a serious win for Republicans.” The pattern extends further: in 2025, Republicans voted to slash polling locations by more than a third and eliminate free bus transportation to polls for low-income residents. At the state level, Texas has pursued aggressive mid-decade redistricting to benefit Republicans and implemented mail-in voting restrictions that demonstrably reduced turnout following Trump’s election fraud claims.
An analysis of an earlier, even more severe proposal revealed stark disparities: the lowest-income third of ZIP codes would have lost 58% of their Election Day polling sites compared to just 22% in the highest-income areas, while majority-minority communities would have lost 52% of their polling places versus a third in majority-white neighborhoods. Civil rights organizations including the ACLU and the Legal Defense Fund warn that the current proposal will still harm Black, Latino, and Asian American voters who face existing barriers to voting. Democratic County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, challenging O’Hare for county judge, rejected the framing that this plan represents progress, insisting voters deserve the same access they had in 2022, not a comparison to an even worse alternative.
Watch whether the Commissioners Court approves Tuesday’s vote and how national Democrats respond. Tarrant County’s decision could set a precedent for voting access across Texas and signal whether election administration in swing regions will become a defining issue in the midterm fight.
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