U.S. News

The Mayor of a Small Texas Town Was Arrested on 5 Felonies Including Illegal Voting

By Mike Harper · July 16, 2026

Fred Burton won the most recent Arcola mayoral election by 22 votes. According to a grand jury, some of those votes shouldn’t have been cast.

Burton, 68, the mayor of Arcola — a small city of roughly 2,800 people in Fort Bend County southwest of Houston — was arrested Tuesday night and booked into county jail on five felony charges. The indictments cover two elections, three city contracts, and a pattern of alleged misconduct that spans his entire time in office.

The illegal voting charges stem from two separate elections: the Arcola Municipal Runoff Election on June 7, 2025, and the April 23, 2026 City of Arcola General Election — the one Burton won by 22 votes to reclaim the mayor’s seat from his predecessor. Grand jury indictments allege Burton assisted, encouraged, or failed to prevent three people he knew to be ineligible from casting ballots in those elections.

The other three charges reach back to 2023, during Burton’s previous term. One accuses him of using non-public information he accessed through his position as mayor to influence a $15,000 city contract bid — steering the award to a preferred party using insider knowledge. A second charge alleges he presented a fraudulent estimate in connection with the Arcola Food Court Project, submitting false numbers to affect how the city spent public money. The third charge alleges he caused two city council members to sign or execute documents affecting city finances — with a combined value of between $30,000 and $150,000 — without their effective consent, meaning they signed without understanding what they were approving.

Burton appeared before a Fort Bend County magistrate judge following his arrest. As of Wednesday, a bond had been set.

The arrest caps years of documented conflict inside Arcola’s city government. Burton’s tenure has involved a lawsuit against a councilwoman he allegedly had surveilled by a private investigator, paid for with roughly $8,000 in public funds. During his most recent campaign to reclaim the mayor’s seat, someone mailed him a package containing a noose and a threatening note — the FBI investigated but no charges were filed. He won the election anyway, reclaiming the office from Veeda Williams, who had unseated him in 2024.

It is not yet clear what happens to the mayoral seat in the wake of the arrest. Under Texas law, a public official convicted of a felony is removed from office, but Burton has not been convicted — the charges are indictments, not verdicts. He is currently presumed innocent of all charges.

The Fort Bend County District Attorney’s office is handling the prosecution.