Category: State & Local Officials — County Commissioner (Northeast Tarrant County) Role: Republican Tarrant County Commissioner, Precinct 3 (2025-present); former Texas State Representative, HD-93 (2013-2023); author of the 2021 “Krause List” of approximately 850 school library books. Priority: P1 (Voted YES on the September 1, 2026 polling-site reduction; sustained record of using government-review letters and restrictive legislation to constrain educational, informational, and voting access)

Role

Matt Krause represents Precinct 3, covering northeast Tarrant County (Bedford, Colleyville, Grapevine, Keller, Southlake, and portions of northeast Fort Worth), on the five-member Tarrant County Commissioners Court.

As a Precinct 3 commissioner in a 3-2 Republican majority, Krause is one of three votes O’Hare has needed to enact each of the 2025 mid-cycle redistricting map and the 2026 polling-site reduction. Precinct 3 is one of the two precincts most affected by the 2025 redistricting.

Background

Krause is an attorney and former state legislator. He served in the Texas House of Representatives for District 93 (Fort Worth-area) from 2013 to 2023. He chaired the Texas House General Investigating Committee. He ran for Texas Attorney General in the 2022 Republican primary, withdrew, and then lost the 2022 Republican primary for Tarrant County District Attorney. He won the Precinct 3 commissioner’s race in November 2024, succeeding retiring Republican Gary Fickes, and took office in January 2025.

Documented Actions

1. September 1, 2026 Vote to Cut 92 Election Day Polling Sites

Evidence: On September 1, 2026, Krause was one of the three Republican votes on the Tarrant County Commissioners Court that approved a 3-2 party-line reduction of Election Day polling sites from 316 (2022 midterms baseline) to 224 for the November 2026 general election — a 92-site, approximately 30% cut — and a reduction of early voting sites from 50 to 47.

Reporting by Votebeat and the Fort Worth Report documented that the plan’s closures fell disproportionately on high-poverty ZIP codes (a roughly 41% reduction in the highest-poverty ZIP codes versus a roughly 15% reduction in the lowest-poverty ZIP codes).

SourcesThe Texas Tribune, “Tarrant County removes 92 polling sites ahead of November election,” September 1, 2026 (); NBC News, “Key Texas county votes to cut polling sites ahead of the midterms,” September 2026 (); Democracy Docket, “‘A deliberate barrier’,” September 2026 ().The plan eliminated the University of Texas at Arlington Maverick Activity Center — a large student-serving early and Election Day site — and left the 76104 ZIP code (a majority Black and Hispanic area) without a polling site.

Pattern: Party-line vote to consolidate polling sites with disparate impact on high-poverty and majority-minority ZIP codes; elimination of a large university polling site.

2. June 2025 Vote to Approve Mid-Cycle Redistricting Plan

Evidence: Krause was one of the three Republican votes approving the June 2025 mid-cycle redistricting of the Commissioners Court precincts. Plaintiffs in Jackson v. Tarrant County (N.D. Tex. filed June 4, 2025) alleged the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments by concentrating Black and Hispanic residents into a single precinct in order to make a fourth precinct more reliably Republican.

SourcesAmerican Redistricting Project, “Jackson v. Tarrant County,” case docket (); Fort Worth Report, “Lawsuit accusing Tarrant County of racial gerrymandering dropped, one remains,” December 1, 2025 ().The district court denied a preliminary injunction (September 12, 2025); the Fifth Circuit affirmed; the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed on December 1, 2025. The Fifth Circuit accepted partisanship as the operative explanation for the map’s racial effects.

Pattern: Mid-decade partisan redistricting with documented racial-consolidation effects; predicate vote for the subsequent polling-site consolidation.

3. The “Krause List” of ~850 School Library Books (October 2021)

Evidence: On October 25, 2021, then-State Representative Krause, in his capacity as chair of the Texas House General Investigating Committee, sent a letter to Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath and to Texas school districts asking whether districts stocked any of a 16-page list of approximately 850 book titles. The letter also asked how much district money had been spent on the books.

SourcesBook Riot, “All 850 Books Texas Lawmaker Matt Krause Wants to Ban: An Analysis” (); WFAA, “Former state lawmaker who kickstarted library book reviews never thought effort would grow so large” (); The Hechinger Report, “The magic pebble and a lazy bull: The book ban movement has a long timeline” (); Wikipedia, “Matt Krause” ().The list disproportionately consisted of titles addressing LGBTQ+ subjects, race, sex education, teen pregnancy, and abortion; independent analyses (including Book Riot‘s taxonomy of the full list) found that LGBTQ+ titles made up more than half of the list. The letter has been widely credited by both supporters and critics with accelerating a national wave of school-library review and removal policies.

Pattern: Use of a legislative-committee inquiry letter to trigger informal removal of books outside any published review procedure; disproportionate targeting of LGBTQ+ and race-related content.

Pattern Analysis

Cross-References

Krause’s documented conduct spans two accountability categories: (a) restriction of educational and informational access via chair-of-committee letters targeting library content; and (b) restriction of voting access via commissioners-court votes to redistrict and consolidate polling sites. Both patterns rely on nominally neutral administrative mechanisms (a committee inquiry; an efficiency review) to accomplish substantive constraints on protected participation.

Related profiles:

• tim-ohare-profile — County Judge; voted YES with Krause on the polling-site reduction and mid-cycle redistricting.
• manny-ramirez-profile — Commissioner Precinct 4; voted YES with Krause.
• alisa-simmons-profile — Commissioner Precinct 2; voted NO.
• roderick-miles-profile — Commissioner Precinct 1; voted NO.

Related skills:

• voter-suppression-law — Section 2 VRA and disparate-impact analysis of polling-site consolidations.
• election-law-and-administration — Countywide polling-place programs and legal standards for site selection.
• democratic-health-monitoring — Educational and informational access as democratic-health indicators.

Severity Assessment

Immediate harm: High — Krause’s vote was necessary to approve the 92-site reduction; academic literature indicates such a reduction depresses in-person turnout by approximately 5.65–6.9 percentage points on average, with larger effects on Black voters. Democratic erosion: High — Compounding sequence: chair-of-committee letter chilling library curation (2021); vote on redistricting concentrating minority voters (2025); vote on polling-site consolidation (2026). Authoritarian markers: Educational censorship pressure; polling-place restriction with disparate racial impact; use of ostensibly neutral administrative mechanisms to accomplish restrictive substantive goals.

Accountability Status

Current status: Active (serving as Tarrant County Commissioner, Precinct 3, term ending January 2029).

Legal exposure:

• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. § 10301) — as a member of the Commissioners Court, Krause is a proper defendant in any Section 2 challenge to the polling-site plan or the underlying redistricting.
• 42 U.S.C. § 1983 — deprivation of the right to vote or of First Amendment rights under color of state law.
• Texas Election Code § 43.007 — Countywide Polling Place Program compliance review.
• First Amendment (school library speech) — the Krause List letter itself did not compel removals, but downstream district actions premised on it are litigable under Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982) and progeny; several 2022-2025 school-library cases have cited the letter as evidence of a coordinated removal effort.

Congressional oversight:

• House Committee on House Administration — Elections Subcommittee.
• U.S. House Judiciary Committee — Constitution Subcommittee (VRA enforcement).
• U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce (school-library censorship inquiries).

Public accountability:

• Ongoing coverage: The Texas Tribune, Fort Worth Report, KERA News, Votebeat, Democracy Docket.
• Organizations tracking Krause conduct: American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom (post-2021 letter), PEN America (“Banned in the USA” reports), Texas Freedom Network, League of Women Voters of Tarrant County, Texas Civil Rights Project, NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
• Election context: Krause serves in a 3-2 Republican majority whose votes on election administration are the direct object of Jackson v. Tarrant County-adjacent litigation.

Truth and Reconciliation Considerations

Investigation priorities

1. Reconstruct Krause’s decision process on the September 1, 2026 polling-site vote: internal precinct-level maps, communications with the County Judge’s office, and any modeling of turnout impact on Precinct 3 residents.
2. Preserve and review communications between Krause’s state-legislative office and the Texas Education Agency, TEA staff, outside conservative-education advocacy groups (Texas Public Policy Foundation, Heritage Foundation), and school-district superintendents in the 30 days on either side of the October 25, 2021 letter.
3. Identify the individuals who compiled the 850-title list, whether it was drawn from an existing outside list, and the criteria used.
4. Cross-reference Precinct 3 polling-site closures against the June 2025 redistricting changes to determine whether closures track precincts absorbing the new partisan balance.
5. Determine what internal legal advice, if any, Krause received on the constitutional risk of the 2021 letter and of the 2025-26 election-administration votes.

Testimony value

Krause’s compelled testimony under use immunity (18 U.S.C. § 6002) could uniquely illuminate: (a) internal Republican coordination on the 2026 polling-site count target; (b) the origin of the Krause List and its intended downstream use; (c) coordination between his current commissioner role and outside election-integrity organizations; and (d) his personal understanding of the legal standards under Section 2 of the VRA and the First Amendment as applied to his votes and letters.

Institutional reform

• Statutory reform: Amend Texas Government Code chapter on legislative oversight to require published methodology, notice, and target-selection criteria for any state-legislative committee inquiry into local-government content decisions (education, library, election materials).
• Statutory reform: Amend Texas Election Code § 43.007 to require impact analysis for any polling-site reduction exceeding 10% within one cycle.
• Oversight mechanism: Require Texas county commissioners courts to publish precinct-level turnout modeling for any polling-site change.
• Professional standards: State-bar and legislative-ethics review of attorney-legislator use of committee-inquiry authority to accomplish constitutionally suspect ends.

Cross-References

Skills: voter-suppression-law, election-law-and-administration, democratic-health-monitoring, patriot-voting-research, election-interference-defense-2026

Related profiles: tim-ohare-profile, manny-ramirez-profile, alisa-simmons-profile, roderick-miles-profile

Topics: tarrant-county, polling-place-closures, redistricting, book-banning, voting-rights-act, first-amendment, texas-legislature

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Investigative trail pointers (public records)

Education only — verify independently. Absence of hits is not proof.

Use public-records-research-specialist, corporate-intelligence-investigator, and public-corruption-ombudsman evidence tiers.

Sources

1. The Texas Tribune, “Tarrant County removes 92 polling sites ahead of November election,” September 1, 2026.
2. NBC News, “Key Texas county votes to cut polling sites ahead of the midterms,” September 2026.
3. Democracy Docket, “‘A deliberate barrier’: Texas battleground county cuts 30% of midterm voting locations,” September 2026.
4. Votebeat, “Fracas over Tarrant County voting sites,” August 6, 2026.
5. American Redistricting Project, “Jackson v. Tarrant County (TX).”
6. Fort Worth Report, “Lawsuit accusing Tarrant County of racial gerrymandering dropped, one remains,” December 1, 2025.
7. Book Riot, “All 850 Books Texas Lawmaker Matt Krause Wants to Ban: An Analysis.”
8. WFAA, “Former state lawmaker who kickstarted library book reviews never thought effort would grow so large.”
9. KERA News, “Matt Krause looks ahead to representing northeast Tarrant County on commissioners court,” December 31, 2024.
10. Wikipedia, “Matt Krause.”
11. Brennan Center for Justice, “Did Consolidating Polling Places in Milwaukee Depress Turnout?”

Factcheck notice: This profile documents public conduct and public statements by a public official. The 2021 letter’s contents and recipient list are drawn from public reporting; the profile does not attribute any book removal to Krause personally where the removal decision was made by a school district.

Last Updated: 2026-09-02 Profile Status: Published — under continuing review Next Review: Monthly through the November 2026 general election