The rate of rejected mail ballots soared in the March primary elections in Texas — and those rejections disproportionately affected Democrats, especially Black voters in the state’s biggest county.
The rejection rate hit more liberal areas of the state with more than 15% of mail ballots thrown out in Democratic-leaning counties, compared to 9.1% in Republican-leaning counties. In Tarrant County, election officials rejected 813 ballots in the Democratic primary under the new voter ID rules, but just three ballots in the Republican primary, according to theOne of the highest rates of rejections was in Harris County, which includes Houston and is the state’s largest population center .
that have imposed harsh new voting restrictions after former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.that requires voters to provide their driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number. Some voters left the field blank or entered an ID number different than the one election officials had on file. The state provides a limited period of time for voters to correct problems on their ballots, but the vast majority of ballots flagged for rejection were not fixed before the deadline.
Hakim said that her office “is deeply troubled by the number of mail ballot rejections” during the March primary, especially considering the much lower number of rejections in 2018. “The new voting laws brought on by Senate Bill 1 are leading to the disenfranchisement of Harris County’s most vulnerable populations, including communities of color, the elderly, and voters with disabilities.
“Texas was already the hardest state to vote in before Republicans passed these laws that made it even harder,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, in a statement to. “What we’re seeing today is a small preview of what we can expect to see at a far wider scale in November unless the federal government finally takes real action to intervene.”
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