Election supervisors in Texas have warned that new stricter voter ID requirements ahead of next month’s state governor’s primary have already resulted in an uncharacteristically high number of ballot rejections.
Voting rights activists have expressed fears that new laws making access to the vote more difficult – that have been passed in many states across the US by Republicans – will impact Democrat-leaning voters of color.
According to officials in media reports, as many as 40% of roughly 3,600 returned ballots in Harris county, Texas’ most populous county that incorporates Houston, have lacked the identification number required under Senate Bill 1, a Republican-sponsored bill designed to tie voters to valid IDs.
In Williamson county, a northern suburb of Austin with a fast-growing population of non-white residents, the rejection rate has been about 25% of early mail-in votes ahead of the 1 March primary which will determine which of the five Democratic challengers, including former US congressman Beto O’Rourke, will likely take on the Republican governor, Greg Abbott.
Many of the rejected ballots, election officials said, fail a new requirement to provide an identification number inside the return envelope.
Election officials in Harris county alone have said 1,360, or 40%, of mail-in ballots were sent back to voters as of Wednesday because they lacked an ID number.
“We’ll see how many we get back,” Isabel Longoria, the Harris county elections administrator, told the Texas Tribune. “That’s our big question mark right now: are voters going to go through the extra step to correct it?”
But officials have also said they hope the rate of rejected ballots will fall as more arrive. In Hays county, south-west of Austin, elections chief Jennifer Anderson, said and initial 25% rejection rate had dropped to 4% in recent days.
“It seems like our outreach is working,” Anderson told the Washington Post.
But the rejection rate has alarmed voting rights advocates attempting to gauge the impact of SB1, one of many voting laws enacted last year after false claims that the 2020 presidential race was colored by voter fraud.
“Texans deserve to have confidence in the electoral system,” said state congressman Briscoe Cain, a leading Republican promoter of the Texas initiative that instituted uniform voting hours, expanded access for those who need assistance and enhanced access of party-affiliated poll watchers.
SB1 requires Texas voters to provide either a state identification number, typically from a driver’s license, or the last four digits of their social security number, that match the ID number on their voter registration record. The bill also imposes new penalties for anyone who registers to vote or casts a ballot but is not eligible to do so.
In addition, mail-in voting is available to those over 65, those who will be away from home on election day or can show they have a disability that prevents them from in-person voting.
“I’m confident that local election officials will prioritize assisting voters through the process instead of gaslighting to gin up fear and confusion,” Cain said.
The measures appear to potentially disqualify newcomers, often minority groups, from voting effectively in the typically white, conservative state.
Jo Nell Yarbrough, a 76-year-old retired educator from the town of Katy, west of Houston, told the Post she’d received a letter informing her that she had failed to include an ID number on her ballot. “It feels like people were just sitting up late at night thinking up ways to discourage people from voting,” she said.
