Commissioner Matt Krause: “I feel very confident that every registered voter in Tarrant County is going to have access to a polling place.”

DALLAS — Tarrant Count Precinct 3 Commissioner Matt Krause is one of the three Republicans who voted to reduce the number of election day voting locations by nearly a third.

And he tells us it wasn’t a difficult decision because he heard many of the same complaints about reductions during the constitutional amendment election in 2025 and that election, he says, turned out just fine.

“We had record turnout in that 2025 election and what we saw were wait times on early voting of two minutes and under and on election day was under eight minutes,” explained the Republican. “And so, all of the same arguments that were used last year in 2025 were the ones they were using in 2026 without the admission that, ‘Hey, maybe we were wrong in 2025 and just lower polling places doesn’t mean it’s voter suppression.’ It just means you’re more efficient and effective to get everybody to the polls.”

For the Nov. 3 midterm election, Tarrant County will now have 224 election day voting locations and 47 polling locations for early voting.

Krause tells us more than 200 polling locations used during previous elections were either unwilling or unable to host voters this November.

And despite critics arguing the reductions will suppress the vote, particularly the minority vote, and make it harder for folks to get to the polls, Krause says he’s more than confident every registered voter in Tarrant County will have access to a polling place. He points to two weeks of early voting as well as election day.

“We’ve made sure that polling places that have always been used and well-trafficked, those ones stayed there. If you’re really trying to suppress the vote, you would take away some of the key voting places in certain parts of the county where you knew that people were going to come and vote maybe not the way that you would want them to. We didn’t do any of that,” the Republican told us on Inside Texas Politics.

Supporters of reducing the number of polling places often cite cost savings, not having to hire qualified people to run the site, for example.

But when we asked Commissioner Krause how much the county was saving, he didn’t have an exact answer.

“That’s kind of a hard question. Save from what? Now, we know every early day voting site cost the taxpayers about $25,000. Every election day site saves you about $4,000. But I don’t think you can just say, well, from 2022 to now because there’s a reason some of those sites weren’t used. There’s a reason we went to some other sites,” Krause answered.

And if the situation goes south on election day and the county sees long lines and long waits, would Krause rethink the plan and be willing to add polling locations back into the mix before the next election?

He says yes. But he also expects the same from his opponents.

“I think as an elected official, you always have to be willing to rethink. ‘Was this the right decision? Was this the wrong decision?’ So, I will always look at the data and say, ‘Hey, do we need to make changes here or there?’” relayed the Republican. “I would encourage those on the other side of this argument as well, to look at he data, to look at the results and also be willing to reassess maybe this wasn’t as bad as we were making it out to be.”