Denton City Council votes unanimously to add polling location at UNT

Denton Record-Chronicle
Christian McPhate - City of Denton reporter
March 8, 2023

The battle to put a polling location at the University of North Texas ended with a thud Tuesday evening nearly a month since news broke that one wouldn’t be provided for students, despite polling locations being available on campus since 2019.

Denton City Council members voted unanimously to put a voting location at the Wesley Foundation Center on campus at 1501 Maple St. for early voting and the May 6 election day.

The last day to register to vote is April 6.

“I appreciate the entire body coming together to get this done so quickly,” said at-large council member Brandon Chase McGee. “It was just an oversight.”

District 3 council member Jesse Davis said there would also be a polling location at South Branch Library for voters in the Southridge neighborhood. It’s a place that has a good precinct turnout for voters, Davis said.

After a late January work session, the Wesley Center was removed from the list of polling locations available for the upcoming May 6 elections, which City Secretary Rosa Rios presented at the Feb. 8 council meeting for council members to certify.

During that meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Brian Beck asked why the Wesley Center wasn’t included as a polling location for students. Some confusion followed, and the discussion ended with Beck proclaiming it wasn’t a hill he wanted to die on.

Davis, who represents the UNT area and is seeking reelection, didn’t raise objections about the campus polling site’s absence despite its availability.

A county criminal prosecutor, Davis is also facing recall election for his stances on decriminalizing misdemeanor amounts of marijuana and on the City Council passing an abortion rights resolution, two issues many of his constituents support.

“First, I want to thank my friends in District 3 since I will appear on the ballot twice,” Davis said at an early February work session. “... Voters have the ability to circulate these petitions and call these voters to account. There is no independent fact-checking and nobody double-checking — to check signatures. There are things in this petition that are not factually accurate.”

Davis’ inaction on the UNT polling location was quickly denounced on social media by people who fought to put one on campus in the first place.

Having fought hard to get a UNT polling location for city elections years ago, I'm shocked to learn that Council didn't include a UNT location for the '23 city elections. What happened, Councilmembers @BeckforDenton , @McGeeForDenton , & Vicki Byrd?https://t.co/BRJ8snvPNN pic.twitter.com/8O4Mu1wNNi

— Deb Armintor (she/they) (@debfordenton) February 10, 2023

Whew. So there's still time to add it. Needless to say, don't let the elected officials who voted against un-gerrymandering Denton's largest community of young residents deprive that same community of the voting access they demand and have come to expect.

— Deb Armintor (she/they) (@debfordenton) February 10, 2023

“... Don’t let the elected officials who voted against un-gerrymandering Denton’s largest community of young residents deprive that same community of the voting access they demand and have come to expect,” former council member Deb Armintor, who fought to get a polling location on campus, wrote in a Feb. 10 post on Twitter.

Davis has denied that he was trying to suppress voters.

In May 2021, Davis ran unopposed and received 1,013 votes — about 700 fewer than the 1,723 ballots cast for him in May 2019, when he faced two other opponents, according to Denton County elections data.

That 2021 number is why only 254 signatures were needed to put Davis’ recall election on the ballot. The number of signatures needed is 25% of the number of registered voters who voted in that council race in the previous election, according to the city charter.

Mayor Gerard Hudspeth claimed it was a voting situation that Davis didn’t have to face. Davis could have allowed the race to be called in his favor, as the council did for District 2 council member Brian Beck, who’s unopposed in his race, during Tuesday night’s council meeting.

But in Beck’s case, there was no choice involved. Now it is no longer an option to keep your name on the ballot if you’re running unopposed, Davis said in a Tuesday email to the Denton Record-Chronicle.

A recent change to state law requires that the election is called in the unopposed candidate’s favor and the single-district election canceled, according to the city secretary’s presentation Tuesday.

“As I said at the time, I don’t like the idea of the city council declaring one of their own members elected,” Davis wrote. “Voters should have the opportunity to either vote for me, or skip that election, or draw a frowny face on their ballot if they want to. It was also clear that an election with no votes would create a legal question in the event of a recall.

“Judging by the shenanigans we’re seeing this cycle, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a spurious legal challenge, just to confuse voters. So my choice then was the same as always — leave it to the voters to decide.”