A whopping 24,636 Texas ballots had been tossed out within the state’s March 1 major election, largely attributable to confusion over new voter identification rules, in response to the state.
The Texas Secretary of State’s workplace stated 12.38% of major ballots had been rejected, up from round 1% final yr, the Dallas Morning Information reported Wednesday. Experiences of abnormally excessive numbers of ballots being tossed out circulated within the weeks after the first, however the state illuminated the complete extent of the issue this week.
Texas’ Republican-controlled legislature despatched a bundle of extreme voting restrictions to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk final yr following a dramatic stunt by elected Democrats to dam the laws by leaving the state en masse. Dozens of Texas Home Democrats traveled to Washington, D.C., to induce lawmakers there to move voting rights protections on a nationwide scale.
However these payments stalled within the U.S. Senate, the place a pair of Democratic senators nonetheless refuse to vary the filibuster guidelines to get round Republican obstruction. Amid the specter of arrest, sufficient Texas Democrats returned to the state by the top of the summer time to represent a quorum, and Abbott signed the voting laws in September.
Now we’re seeing the consequences.
“The one purpose that the rejection charge soared this excessive is that Senate Invoice 1 imposed this new ID requirement and it's disenfranchising eligible voters,” stated Texas Civil Rights Mission lawyer James Slattery.
Even nation music legend Willie Nelson had hassle ― his spouse informed the Austin-American Statesman that she and Nelson made two makes an attempt earlier than their ballots had been lastly accepted.
In some counties, NPR reported, as much as 40% of ballots had been initially flagged for rejection.
Texans are solely eligible to vote by mail in the event that they meet sure circumstances, similar to being over 65 years previous, having an sickness or incapacity, being inside three weeks of giving beginning or being absent by the early voting interval and Election Day.
Voters should apply for a mail-in poll, writing both a driver’s license quantity or a partial Social Safety quantity on each the appliance and the outer envelope. These numbers should even be included on the precise poll, and they should match voter registration information.
Abbott had promised the brand new guidelines would “make it simpler for individuals to have the ability to go vote.” He cinched his social gathering’s gubernatorial nomination within the major and is anticipated to face Democrat Beto O’Rourke in November.
AARP Texas Director Tina Tran known as the widespread poll rejections “deeply troubling.”
“Poll rejections of this proportion might considerably swing the outcomes of state and native elections. These rejections of ballots additionally could possibly be a mere tip of the iceberg of issues confronted on the polls, as there have additionally been stories of widespread rejections of poll purposes,” Tran stated.
Texas was one in all 19 states to enact new restrictions on voting rights in 2021 as a part of a GOP marketing campaign to battle a fictitious voter fraud downside.
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