It is primary day in Texas, and new identification requirements for voters who cast their ballots by mail are causing problems for thousands in the Lone Star State. But there’s still time to shore up those votes and correct those ballots.
NBC News reported Tuesday that, since last night, election officials throughout Texas have been contacting voters—when their information is available—by phone and email to alert them to missing criteria.
Texas Republicans changed numerous election laws in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s push to relitigate his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden. One of those changes made it so that a form of identification, like a driver’s license number or partial social security number, must be written on mail-in ballots or the envelope the completed ballot is returned in.
That number must match exactly whatever number the voter listed on their original voter registration. But many have had trouble remembering those details, especially when it has been decades since they last registered. To add, the only voters in Texas allowed to submit mail-in ballots are voters who are sick or disabled, over 65, expected to give birth within three weeks of the election, or are in prison.
Now, as the Texas races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and the House are at the finish line, election officials are reporting ballots rejections hand over fist. Some 29% of ballots received just this weekend were rejected in Harris County, the largest county in the state. In 2020, the rejection rate was just 1%.
Voters can fix their ballots by the end of voting day, or 7 PM, on Tuesday, Mar. 1 if they did not include their required identifying information. Changes can be made online as well as in person. And according to NBC, if an error on a ballot was found “near the end of the early voting period,” then voters can visit their county election office in person to make a change through Mar. 7.
Issues with mail-in ballots have been ongoing for weeks.
In mid-February, when election officials in Harris County reported receiving over 6,500 ballots, they announced a return rate of nearly 38% because of incorrect ID.
On Tuesday morning, Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria reported just over 9,800 ballots received. Over a third, or 3,491 ballots, were flagged for errors. NBC reported that just 16 in that pool were flagged for signature issues. The rest were related to the new ID rules.
Longoria said Tuesday that while voters may have put identifying numbers on their ballots that they know to be true or current, if that doesn’t match what they used to register, then election officials “are not allowed to match those numbers” either.
Texas Secretary of State John Scott posted a video with instructions for the new ID requirements for mail-in ballots just two days before the mail-in deadline was up.
The races in Texas are crucial for voters with hard-line conservatives like Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton looking to hold onto power and keep staunch conservative policies in place, from its suffocating law banning abortions after six weeks or its hate-fueled anti-LGBT directives that make children unwilling pawns in political games.
Abbott is running against Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke’s campaign has zeroed in on Abbott’s mismanagement of the state which has included widespread power grid failures. In a bankruptcy court hearing last week, the former chief of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Bill Magness, testified that Abbott ordered him to keep grid prices as high as he could despite outages caused by freezing winter storms.
In the House, progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros is looking to oust nine-term incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar, an anti-abortion conservative Democrat currently under investigation by the DOJ and FBI. It is her second attempt to unseat Cuellar. She has received endorsements from Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Kristy Noble, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party told The New York Times on Tuesday that calls airing questions and frustrations have been “pretty much constant” since January over new ID rules.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott did not return request for comment Tuesday.