Two Tarrant County Commissioners Court members are throwing names across party lines over the recent proposition to cut 140 polling sites for the 2026 midterm election.
Last week, the five-person court unanimously agreed that the slash was far too large and sent Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig back to the drawing board.
Democrat Alisa Simmons, the Precinct 2 commissioner, has sent out at least five campaign emails in roughly a week blaming Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare and the two other Republicans for the proposed cuts.
All of the emails included a prompt to donate to Simmons’s campaign or sign a petition in her favor. Simmons is running against O’Hare for his seat as Tarrant County Judge in the Nov. 3 election.
“Either Tim O’Hare KNEW a proposal to eliminate ALMOST HALF of our voting locations was moving forward and failed to put a stop to it,” two of the emails said. “OR, if you take him at his word, he did not know what was happening inside the very government he is supposed to lead. Neither explanation is acceptable.”
Simmons was also slated to speak at a rally prior to the Tuesday commissioners court meeting where speakers called the proposal “voter suppression.” She did not end up speaking and didn’t give a reason why.
In the meeting, when the full court discussed the proposal for the first time, O’Hare was the first to say the number of Election Day voting sites was way too low. Simmons agreed but believed O’Hare or one of the other Republicans prompted the slash.
Every member on the court said they didn’t know about the proposed cuts until it came out in the agenda the week before their public meeting.
Ludwig said he did not run the proposal by any member of the court. In order to come up with the 176 sites, he said he apolitically looked at the map of election precincts and determined how many voting locations would be adequate with an increased turnout.
In response to Simmons’s claims, O’Hare said Tuesday that Simmons is being completely dishonest.
“She is the most attention-starved, media-hungry person I’ve ever met, and she uses the media to promote narratives that are repeatedly false and inaccurate, and unfortunately, very few people in the media will actually hold her accountable,” he said.
O’Hare pointed to the fact that all the Republicans volunteered that they didn’t direct Ludwig to make the change nor did they know anything about it beforehand. He said it wouldn’t make logical sense for Republicans to reduce the number of polling locations in a Republican-majority county, essentially reducing access for their voters.
“So either all of us are lying, and all of us are or incredibly dumb, or both, or the narrative that she’s promoting, like most narratives she promotes, are simply not true,” O’Hare said. “Now she’s known to call out all kinds of things as issues and problems without ever offering a single solution. It’s just smear, smear, smear, smear.”
The commissioners court will be presented with a new list of polling locations for the Nov. 3 election at their meeting on Sept. 1.
Simmons did not respond to a request to comment from the Star-Telegram.
O’Hare said he is “100% confident” that everyone in Tarrant County will have a place to vote.
“It has never been easier to vote in the state of Texas than it is now, unless you are not a U.S. citizen,” O’Hare said. “Then that is very difficult to do here in Texas, as it should be.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2026 at 7:35 PM.
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Rachel Royster is a news and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, specifically focused on Tarrant County. She joined the newsroom after interning at the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Capital Community News in DC. A Houston native and Baylor grad, Rachel enjoys traveling, reading and being outside. She welcomes any and all news tips to her email.