The Tarrant County Republican Party unanimously signed a resolution this week condemning the Tarrant County Commissioners Court’s failure to close a number of voting sites on college campuses, with the resolution blatantly acknowledging that party officials believe closing those sites would have improved Republicans’ chance to win in upcoming elections.
Noting that Republican commissioners Manny Ramirez and Gary Fickes voted with Democrats to block the proposal, the resolution says thate vote endangers “the party’s ability to maintain robust, conservative leadership in local government.”
First-year commissioner Ramirez usually votes with the Republican majority; as the Texas Tribune pointed out, he voted for large tax cuts and helped block funding to a nonprofit over its support of LGBTQ and abortion-rights issues. But Ramirez said he couldn’t in good conscience eliminate locations that served more than 9,000 residents last election. An estimated 10 percent of early voting in Tarrant County in the 2020 election took place on college campuses. Tarrant County Republican chair Bo French wrote that getting rid of on-campus voting would be “a serious win for Republicans in Tarrant County.”
In 2020, Joe Biden won in Tarrant County, the largest urban county in the U.S. that usually votes Republican.
— David Taffet