How Tarrant County found a way to keep voting sites open at college campuses
Tarrant County voters will be able to cast early ballots at 49 polling sites, including college campuses, in the primary election.
There had been concerns that there wouldn’t be voting sites at college campuses because of a law that went into effect Sept. 1 eliminating so-called temporary voting sites. More than 11,000 votes were cast at Tarrant college campuses in 2018.
But on Tuesday, Tarrant County Commissioners approved a plan to preserve early voting sites at college campuses, a list that includes TCU, UT Arlington, Texas Wesleyan, the UNT Health Science Center, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Tarrant County College’s Northwest, South and Northeast campuses.
One new location was added: Tarrant County College’s Trinity River Campus.
“I want to congratulate you for recommending approval of permanent early voting sites at all of Tarrant County’s universities and colleges,” Commissioner Roy Brooks told Elections Administrator Heider Garcia Tuesday. “I think that’s the right thing for us to do and I thank you for being responsive.”
This became possible once Tarrant election officials formally reviewed their budget and found enough money to keep colleges open as full-time voting sites, county documents show.
Most of these colleges for years were used as temporary voting sites, places election officials wanted open for a few days, but not the entire early voting period. They were among the temporary sites that were not cost effective to keep open during the entire early voting period because they didn’t draw huge crowds, officials said.
State lawmakers last year passed a law ending temporary voting sites. Supporters said the goal was to curb attempts to influence votes, such as placing temporary voting sites at schools for school bond elections.
State Rep. Chris Turner, a Democrat from Grand Prairie and House Democratic Caucus chair, commended the commissioners Tuesday for prioritizing the sites at local college campuses.
“That’s a real testament to their leadership that they did that. But it shouldn’t have come to that,” Turner said, stressing that commissioners should have been allowed to have some locations open for only a portion of the early voting period, as they had previously.
“They had to change it because that’s what the Republicans in the legislature said they had to do because a lot of people voted in the last election — and there were a lot of college students that voted,” Turner said. “So we know what that was about.”
Democrats filed a federal lawsuit claiming that requirements of the new state law, such as requiring temporary polling sites to be open for at least eight hours, will lead to lower voter turnout. The lawsuit filed by the Texas Democratic Party, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, claims the law will affect some of the youngest voters.
“I add my thanks for including universities and colleges, especially UTA,” Commissioner Devan Allen said during Tuesday’s meeting. “I’m glad to see things moving forward.”
Primary elections in Texas will be March 3.
Early voting runs from Feb. 18-28.
Staff writer Tessa Weinberg contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 14, 2020 at 12:01 PM.
