Ahead of the November midterm elections, Republican officials in the third most populous county of Texas have voted to slash the number of polling sites by nearly one-third. Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, will have just 224 polling sites for 1.3 million voters. The change was approved in a party-line vote Tuesday, with all three of the county’s Republican commissioners voting in favor and the two Democrats opposing it. Civil rights groups including the ACLU and NAACP warn the changes will disproportionately affect voters of color.
“The eyes of the nation are on Tarrant County,” says Roderick Miles Jr., a Democratic Tarrant County commissioner, who calls the voting restriction a “modern-day poll tax.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.