Texas Supreme Court: Voters don't qualify for mail-in ballots due to lack of COVID immunity [View all]

[babylonsister]

Texas Supreme Court: Voters don’t qualify for mail-in ballots due to lack of COVID immunity
By Tessa Weinberg
May 27, 2020 06:59 PM , Updated 30 minutes ago


The Texas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday afternoon that a lack of immunity to the novel coronavirus does not make a voter eligible for a mail-in ballot under Texas law.

Attorney General Ken Paxton had asked the state’s highest civil court to weigh in on the issue to prevent local election officials in some of Texas’ largest counties from processing mail-in ballots for voters who cite the disability category and normally would not qualify.

While the court agreed with Paxton that a lack of immunity to the virus alone would not qualify a voter for a mail-in ballot, they declined to order local election officials to investigate mail-in ballot applications they have received and said there is no evidence election officials have processed faulty ones.

“We agree with the State that a voter’s lack of immunity to COVID-19, without more, is not a ‘disability’ as defined by the Election Code. But the State acknowledges that election officials have no responsibility to question or investigate a ballot application that is valid on its face,” the opinion written by Chief Justice Nathan Hecht read.

Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article243039891.html