Justice Dept Intervention To Protect Mail Voting Rights In Texas Requested By Leaders

By
Caleb Newton
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In Harris County, Texas, Judge Lina Hidalgo, County Attorney Christian Menefee, and Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria have signed onto a new push for the Department of Justice to work to stop the negative effects on mail-in voting from a recently enacted set of suppressive restrictions around the electoral process. (“Judge” is used in Texas to refer to a position that appears roughly equivalent to mayoral roles elsewhere.) Hidalgo and the others wrote to the United States Department of Justice after thousands of applications for mail-in ballots — alongside many completed mail-in ballots — were flagged for rejection in the county because of the new rules imposed on the process by state Republicans.

As of February 15, a full 14 percent of the mail-in voting applications that Harris County authorities had received this cycle had “been flagged for rejection due to [the GOP-backed law’s] new voter identification requirements,” county leaders said, and many more weren’t accepted for other reasons. Just 6.6 percent of all mail-in ballot applications received by the county were tagged for rejection during the corresponding period from the last midterm primary elections, back in 2018. As of the same point in this cycle (February 15), Harris leaders said that over one-third of the mail-in ballots that the county had already received for the midterms had been flagged for rejection specifically because of the new voter identification requirements in that controversial state law, known as S.B. 1. The new law “also has new voter identification requirements for the mail ballot itself and places the newly required ID fields in an inconspicuous place, under the flap of the vote-by-mail envelope,” county officials explained.

Although there’s still time for voters whose ballots have been flagged in this cycle to fix the issues, the final rate of mail-in ballot rejection for the last midterm elections in Harris County was 0.2 percent. County leaders added as follows:

‘[The new law] is therefore achieving exactly what its authors set out to do: erect more hurdles in front of the ballot box and systemically suppress the vote in Harris County… We believe every American has the right to vote. Legitimate measures to protect the security of the electoral process are essential. But the days of literacy tests, poll taxes, and last-minute impediments to the ballot box should be put behind us for good. Texas already has some of the most stringent voting laws in the nation. Voter ID is required at the polls. Before SB1,Texas mail ballots already required verification of voters’ identification with a signature. SB1’s game of hide and seek voting is taking us back to the dark days we have all fought to put to rest.’

The letter writers, addressing Attorney General Merrick Garland, pushed for comprehensive action, asking officials to “please exhaust every legal option available to ensure that each eligible voter in Harris County and the State of Texas has their vote counted. No action is too small to preserve our democracy.” Others, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have also pushed for further action by the Justice Department on voting rights issues. As Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) put it, “We think the Attorney General needs to step in and let it be known that the Justice Department is not going to be quiet when this is going on. We can’t wait until the elections are over and then litigate the cases, when you look around, and you’ve got people in office, and they’re there against the Constitutional principles of the United States.”



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