Mail Ballot Rejections Surge in Texas, With Signs of a Race Gap

[L. Coyote]

Source: NY Times

More than 18,000 voters in Texas’ most populous counties had their mail-in ballots rejected in the state’s primary election this month, according to a review of election data by The New York Times, a surge in thrown-out votes that disproportionately affected Black people in the state’s largest county and revealed the impact of new voting regulations passed by Republicans last year.

In Harris County, which includes Houston and is the state’s most populous county, areas with large Black populations were 44 percent more likely to have ballots rejected than heavily white areas, according to a review of census survey data and election results by the Harris County election administrator’s office.

The analysis also found that Black residents made up the largest racial group in six of the nine ZIP codes with the most ballot rejections in the county.

The thousands of ballot rejections, and the racial disparity in rejections in Harris County, provide the clearest evidence yet that the major voting law passed last year by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature has prevented significant numbers of people from voting.

The rejection rate in the state’s most populous counties was roughly 15 percent. ..............

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/us/politics/texas-primary-ballot-rejections.html

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Link to tweet

[iluvtennis]

1. It's called GOP nullification of black/brown votes. Fkn cretins. n/t

[padfun]

2. Is anyone even fighting this?

Or were Texas Dems helpless in the face of raw corruption?

[L. Coyote]

4. Elect Beto!

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[summer_in_TX]

5. Fighting yes. Successfully? Not yet.

Three lawsuits brought by a number of groups including the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities, and the League of Women Voters were ruled against by a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit of Appeals in a split decision. They said the Secretary of State had no enforcement abilities over the areas covered by the suit. A strange ruling.

But this isn't the last of it.

[JohnSJ]

3. racist f**ks

[Demovictory9]

6. Gop would call this sucessful

[sakabatou]

7. Repukes will do anything to win.

[Lonestarblue]

8. New laws working as designed.

Rural Republicans have fewer voters who vote by mail and can thus guide them through the new requirements that seem to be the equivalent of the secret handshake. Election officials in large counties like Harris do not have the staff to address the issues with large numbers of mail ballots missing the new required information—along with poor instructions and deliberately confusing requirements. There were absolutely no public service announcements prior to the primary about the new requirements.

Democrats need to get busy training people how to address these new requirements. I decided long ago, before these latest stupid requirements, that voting by mail in Texas was far more trouble than just going to a voting location. But I’m able to do that. Not everyone is.

[turbinetree]

9. I wonder if two senators AZ and WV got the memo yet on why they still think the filibuster

should stand and what is transpiring the on voting rights being attacked like in Texas is just a pipe dream and nobody has to worry, I think people should be worried ......

[ZonkerHarris]

10. If Republicans don't cheat they will lose and they know this.

[L. Coyote]

11. Bit of a conundrum, we have to win elections because they won't let us vote.

We obviously have to fix the undemocratic injustice at a national level with civil and voting rights legislation.

[ZonkerHarris]

12. they have rigged this system because we failed at the local level across this country.

[ck4829]

13. Exposed!

[ashredux]

14. They added a second driver's license # box on the inner envelope of mail in ballots...

It is easy to miss - because you have to provide it when getting a mail-in ballot