Texas Rejected Nearly 25,000 Ballots In Primary Election With New Voter ID Law
A whopping 24,636 Texas ballots were tossed out in the state’s March 1 primary election, largely due to confusion over new voter identification regulations, according to the state.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office said 12.38% of primary ballots were rejected, up from around 1% last year, the Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday. Reports of abnormally high numbers of ballots being tossed out circulated in the weeks after the primary, but the state illuminated the full extent of the problem this week.
Texas’ Republican-controlled legislature sent a bundle of severe voting restrictions to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk last year following a dramatic stunt by elected Democrats to block the legislation by leaving the state en masse. Dozens of Texas House Democrats traveled to Washington, D.C., to urge lawmakers there to pass voting rights protections on a national scale.
But those bills stalled in the U.S. Senate, where a pair of Democratic senators still refuse to change the filibuster rules to get around Republican obstruction. Amid the threat of arrest, enough Texas Democrats returned to the state by the end of the summer to constitute a quorum, and Abbott signed the voting legislation in September.
Now we’re seeing the effects.
“The only reason that the rejection rate soared this high is that Senate Bill 1 imposed this new ID requirement and it is disenfranchising eligible voters,” said Texas Civil Rights Project attorney James Slattery.
Even country music legend Willie Nelson had trouble ― his wife told the Austin American-Statesman that she and Nelson made two attempts before their ballots were finally accepted.
In some counties, NPR reported, up to 40% of ballots were initially flagged for rejection.
24,636 mail-in ballots (12.38%) were rejected during TX's March primary election according to @TXsecofstate
“The only reason that the rejection rate soared this high is that Senate Bill 1 imposed this new ID requirement and it is disenfranchising eligible voters.” @jcslattery— Texas Civil Rights Project (@TXCivilRights) April 6, 2022
Texans are only eligible to vote by mail if they meet certain conditions, such as being over 65 years old, having an illness or disability, being within three weeks of giving birth or being absent through the early voting period and Election Day.
Voters must apply for a mail-in ballot, writing either a driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number on both the application and the outer envelope. Those numbers must also be included on the actual ballot, and they need to match voter registration records.
Abbott had promised the new rules would “make it easier for people to be able to go vote.” He cinched his party’s gubernatorial nomination in the primary and is expected to face Democrat Beto O’Rourke in November.
AARP Texas Director Tina Tran called the widespread ballot rejections “deeply troubling.”
“Ballot rejections of this proportion could significantly swing the outcomes of state and local elections. These rejections of ballots also could be a mere tip of the iceberg of problems faced at the polls, as there have also been reports of widespread rejections of ballot applications,” Tran said.
Texas was one of 19 states to enact new restrictions on voting rights in 2021 as part of a GOP campaign to battle a fictitious voter fraud problem.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
