Thousands of Texans who tried to vote by mail during this month’s primary election had their ballots cast, many of whom were turned down because of problems voters had in trying to comply with the state’s new voting law.
An analysis of CBS News election data found that at least 16,800 ballot papers were rejected in 14 of the 25 counties with the most registered voters. That’s about 15% of all ballots returned to these counties.
The rejections came in the first major election since the Texas Republicans passed in new comprehensive electoral law, known as SB1, after months of objections from Democrats and voting rights advocates. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill last September.
County election officials told CBS News that the most troubled voter law provision was a requirement that they provide a driver’s license number, a personal identification number, or the last four digits of their driver’s license number. Social Security when they request and return a ballot by mail. . The number provided by voters must match the record in the archive.
County election officials have told the Texas Secretary of State’s office that the “vast majority” of ballot mail rejections stemmed from a failure to provide proper identifying information, according to Sam Taylor. Undersecretary of State for Communications of the Secretary of State of Texas. office.
Harris County, the third most populous county in Houston and home to Houston, rejected 6,888 ballots by mail out of 36,878 returned due to issues complying with the new voting law, according to the County Elections Department. Harris. That’s almost 19% of all returned ballots. Only 31 ballots were rejected for reasons unrelated to the new voting law.
The number of rejected ballots this year far exceeded the rejection rate of the last half-term primaries. In the 2018 primaries, officials said only 135 ballots were rejected by mail out of the 48,473 ballots issued, a rejection rate of 0.3%.
The Harris County Elections Department says it has doubled staffing for voter outreach and contacting voters if there were any issues. But in the end, only 849 people corrected their ballots, out of the 7,750 marked for rejection.
Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria announced earlier this week that she would step down on July 1 after county leaders criticized her management of the March primaries.
But the problems were not limited to Harris County. In Bexar County, where San Antonio is located, nearly 22% of the 18,000 returned ballots were rejected.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Collin County rejected about 14% of all returned ballots. Bruce Sherbert, Collin County Election Administrator, told CBS News that “virtually all rejections were due to new SB1 identification requirements.”
Also in the suburbs of Dallas-Fort Worth, Denton County rejected nearly 17% of all ballots by mail. Of those rejected, 84% were due to ID problems, according to the county’s electoral department.
In Austin County Travis, most of the 896 ballots that were rejected, about 8 percent of the total, had trouble meeting the new identification requirements, according to a spokesman for the Austin County Bureau. Travis County. In Williamson County, North Austin, 73% of the 521 rejected ballots could not be counted due to identification issues. The next most common reason for rejection was to return a ballot after the deadline.
Not all larger counties saw such high rejection rates. Brazoria County, near Houston, rejected 3.6% of returned ballots.
Texas already has strict requirements governing which voters can vote by mail. To be eligible to vote by mail, a voter must be at least 65 years of age or older, be ill or disabled, expect to give birth within three weeks of election day, out of county during early voting, and on election day or confined. in prison, but otherwise with the right to vote.
There were indications of problems for election officials during the weeks leading up to the primaries when a large number of postal voting applications were rejected for failing to comply with SB1. Once the ballots went out to voters, some counties marked more than 30% of the ballots returned for rejectionbut they were able to reduce those numbers through aggressive efforts by contacting voters to fix their ballots.
In Webb County, located along the Texas-Mexico border, officials eventually rejected 31 of the 734 ballots returned, about 4%. Webb County Election Administrator Jose Luis Castillo told CBS News that 112 ballots were initially marked for rejection, mostly because the ballots were incomplete; not all new requirements were initially met.
“(Voters) fought, but it’s more of an educational thing,” Castillo told CBS News. “They are used to the old system, not the new requirements or the new law.”
The Texas Secretary of State’s office encouraged voters to update their registration information online to make sure they have all forms of identification associated with their registration. State and local officials also encouraged voters to fill out the two ID numbers before returning a ballot.
Taylor, who is in the Texas Secretary of State’s office, said state and local officials will focus a lot of voter education on the new requirements for mail voters.
“While in recent years we have focused our voter education efforts on face-to-face identification requirements, this year we are also devoting an important part of our voter education campaign to raising awareness of the new voter education requirements. “Email identification,” Taylor said in a statement. “We are confident that we have the data and research we need to apply the lessons learned during the primaries to an even stronger voter education campaign ahead of the November general election.”
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