Fort Worth has historically had low voter turnout for mayor and council. Will that change?

If past is prologue, people don’t vote in municipal elections in Fort Worth.

Only 15,879 people voted in the 2016 charter election that added two new seats to the Fort Worth City Council. That’s just under 4% of Fort Worth’s registered voters at the time, with a fraction of a percentage making the difference.

More than 87,000 people voted in the June 2021 runoff between now-mayor Mattie Parker and former Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Deborah Peoples. While that was more than double the turnout for the May 2019 mayoral race, it was still less than 20% of Fort Worth’s 503,199 registered voters.

The mayoral race is less competitive this time around and that could tamp down turnout, said Emily Farris, an associate professor of political science at TCU.

Conservatives see the possibility of low turnout as an opportunity. Tarrant county judge Tim O’Hare told an April 17 gathering of the True Texas Project he’s never seen a quieter election cycle, and urged the group to take advantage to remove two unnamed members of the Fort Worth city council.

“One of them believes men can have periods,” O’Hare said. “Need I say anything else?”

O’Hare declined to say anything else when asked to identify which incumbents he was referring to.

Low turnout in past races has affected how some residents treat the legitimacy of local elections.

Frequent city hall commentator and District 5 council candidate Bob Willoughby has often cited the low turnout in the 2016 charter election to question the legitimacy of the expanded council.

The same criticism has been levied by opponents of Fort Worth’s half-cent sales tax that funds the Crime Control Prevention District. While the July 2020 vote to reauthorize the sales tax won by a two-to-one margin, only 55,975, or roughly 10%, of registered voters cast ballots.

It will be important to see how the new council map impacts turnout in the newly drawn districts, especially those without an incumbent running like Districts 7 and 11, TCU’s Farris said.

District 7 includes the Cultural District and areas north of Loop 820 surrounding Lake Worth. Nonprofit executive Macy Hill is facing small business owners Jason Ellis and Caleb Backholm, both of whom live north of the Loop and argue that experience make them the better candidates for the City Council.

District 11, sometimes referred to as the horseshoe district, is seen as the best opportunity for Fort Worth’s Hispanic population to get more representation on council. It has five candidates who have crisscrossed the district trying to get out the vote.

“I think there has been way too much focus on this race to have some weird lower than normal turnout,” said Tara Maldonado-Wilson, a registered nurse running in the District 11 race.

She’s already planning for a runoff, while noting she does see a path to outright victory on May 6.

“Each candidate has to get their voters out and convert the support into an actual ballot cast,” she said.

The 2021 mayoral and council election that added five new members to the City Council saw two multi-term incumbents lose by hundreds of votes.

District 8 council member Chris Nettles, who represents parts of east of southeast Fort Worth, beat five-term incumbent Kelly Allen Gray by 119 votes in the May general election and 300 votes in the June runoff.

District 6 council member Jared Williams, who represents southwest Fort Worth, got 974 fewer votes than eight-term incumbent Jungus Jordan in the May general election, but was able to force Jordan into the June runoff, where he won by 273 votes.

Both Willams and Nettles were able to garner support from the progressive grassroots group United Fort Worth, which helped them knock doors and turn out voters in the close election.

Jordan’s council predecessor “Landslide Clyde” Picht became the poster child for Fort Worth’s close municipal elections after winning his 1997 election by 10 votes.

A little more than a percent of eligible Texas voters made Ted Cruz a United States senator. In the 2012 primary, Cruz faced off against eight other Republicans, including the popular and well-funded Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

While Dewhurst beat Cruz in the May primary, he failed to capture 50% of the vote leading to a July runoff. Given that Democrats haven’t won a statewide race since 1994, this effectively was the general election.

Cruz easily won the runoff, but only 6% of Texas voters showed up. He got 151,686 more votes than Dewhurst, roughly 1.16% of eligible Texas voters at the time.

Early voting runs from April 24 to May 2 with election day on May 6. If necessary, there will be a runoff election June 3.