Multiple county officials stated that new voting rules in Texas are confusing voters at an alarming rate. If they don’t change them quickly, thousands of ballots could be rejected.
In January, mail voting began ahead of state’s primaries which took place on March 1. This was the first contest in the 2022 midterm cycle. Early in-person voting will begin this week. According to election officials, already thousands of ballots have not met the new state identification requirements.
Officials stated that they will be mailing out ballots, and occasionally calling or emailing voters to inform them of the issues and provide an explanation as to how to correct them. However, they expressed concern that not all voters will fix their ballots on time.
Nearly half of all postal ballots in El Paso County have not met new ID requirements. However, 35 percent of the ballots were rejected in Harris County because of similar reasons, according to county officials.
The Texas state Legislature changed Texas’ election code last year, as Donald Trump continued to spread the lie that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen. In addition to other changes, voters will now be required to provide proof of identification on all mail ballot applications. This includes a driver’s licence number and an envelope to return completed mail ballots. The law also restricted early voting hours and gave partisan poll watchers the ability to vote.
Texas Democrats opposed the new voting law for months, contending that it would disenfranchise voters. They also claimed the changes were unnecessary given the extensive evidence that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to the Houston Chronicle , only 16 cases were closed in Texas’s exhaustive search for fraud in 2020.
This is the first statewide vote since the December implementation of the Senate Bill1 law. Early data suggests that Texans are still struggling to adapt to the changes.
Harris County, which is home to Houston and has more than 4,000,000 residents, was the first to report high rejection rates for mail ballots. According to Isabel Longoria, Harris County Elections Administrator, the county was overwhelmed by thousands of questions about mail-voting in January. They had to quickly hire new staff to handle the influx of work caused by voter confusion and rejected ballots.
Longoria stated that there are many qualified, true, and good voters who have been part of the process, but now they are caught up in an extra layer of bureaucracy.
Longoria reports that 9,809 ballots had been received by election officials as of Tuesday. Of those, more than a third (3,491) were flagged as errors. Sixteen ballots were flagged as having an issue with their signatures, while 3,475 were flagged as having identification problems.
Around 14 percent of all mail ballot applications were rejected due to the ID requirements. According to county data, this is twice the number of applications that were rejected in the 2018 midterm elections.
Sometimes, it is as easy as not having an election official’s driver’s license number in file for a voter.
“The classic example is: You used to put your Social Security number when you registered to vote many decades ago. But now, when you apply for your mail ballot, you use your driver’s licence number. Longorio stated that both numbers are accurate, legal, and correct for the voter. However, we are not permitted to match them.
According to Remi Garza (president of Texas’ Association of Elections Administrators, and elections administrator for Cameron County in Texas), this is why the Texas secretary of State’s office suggested that voters include multiple identification numbers on their ballot applications.
Officials have stated that if voters do not include the same number on the ballot as they did on their application, their ballots may be rejected.
Garza stated that not all counties contact voters in the same way about fixing their ballots.
He said, “It is important to keep in mind that Texas has 254 county and each one faces its unique challenges to implement the new changes.” “The Legislature’s short turnaround time to implement the law has presented its own challenges.”
Cameron County is a county in south Texas with over 400,000 inhabitants. Garza stated Thursday that 41 percent of the received mail ballots have been flagged for identification problems.
Voters have until Friday, February 18, to correct their ballot applications. Texans must postmark their mail ballots before 7 p.m. on the primary day. However, some voters may be able to correct ballot errors up to March 7.
El Paso County is home to over 800,000. Nearly 49 percent of mail ballots have been flagged as rejected. Election workers are sending out ballots and inviting voters to correct the error in person. However, historically, there has been a low number of ballot errors that were fixed by voters prior to the primary.
“In general, only a small percentage will be able to cure their rejected ballots. Lisa Wise (the county’s elections administrator) said that although we haven’t seen so many rejected, it all depends on the voter.
Travis County is Texas’ fifth-largest county by population. They said that they are seeing around 17 percent of returned ballots that have been flagged as missing ID numbers. Victoria Hinojosa spoke on behalf of the county and stated that approximately 7 percent of mail-in ballot applications were rejected. She added that voters are being informed about the errors.
According to Suzie Harvey, Montgomery County’s Elections Administrator, about 10 percent of all mail ballot applications have been rejected in Texas. She said there were approximately 140 ballots. More than one million residents call the county home.
These rejection rates are significantly higher than those seen in Texas general election.
Nearly a million Texans voted via mail in the 2020 election. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, only 0.8 percent of mail ballots were returned, or 8,304 ballots. For a rate of 1.76 per cent, 9,377 ballots were discarded in 2018.
Officials observed that the rejection rate of absentee ballot applications was falling over time. This suggests that voters are adapting.
Bruce Sherbet (elections administrator in Collin County Texas), stated that the rejection rate for absentee ballot applications was around 10% at first, but dropped to about 4 percent after the first batch. This Texas county is home to over a million people.
John Oldham, Fort Bend County elections administrator, said that 21 percent of ballot applications in Fort Bend were rejected in January and 13 percent in February.
He said that delays in the delivery of ballot applications to the county were already occurring due to paper supply problems and the time required to redesign the ballot materials to conform to the new law. Although the county doesn’t yet have rejection rates for ballots, he said they were seeing “definitely” higher reject rates than normal.
Oldham stated that the law would be most detrimental to voters of color. However, many of its opponents claimed it would unfairly deprive voters of their voting rights.
It’s really affecting the elderly. He said that eight-five percent of voters who vote by mail are over 65. “They’re the ones that are most adversely affected, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.” “In fact, in the first month and a quarter, we rejected more Republican applications than we did Democrat applications.”
Beto O’Rourke is a Democrat who wants to challenge Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, in November, criticized the high rejection rate in a statement to NBC News.
He stated that voter suppression was deliberate and designed, working exactly as Greg Abbott intended. He also said that his campaign was trying to mobilize voters in order to count their votes.
Abbott didn’t respond to our request for comment.