What to know about voting in Texas' 2022 primary - The Washington Post
In the wake of Donald Trump’s false claims about voter fraud, Texas Republicans last fall passed a controversial law that left in place the state’s two-week early voting period but made it more complicated to vote by mail, imposed strict rules and penalties for poll workers, and eliminated drive-by voting and 24-hour voting.
Election officials asked state legislators to push back the start of these changes, or even delay the primary, so they could have time to educate voters on the new rules.
But state officials refused. So on March 1, the first primary of the 2022 election season will be held in a state where it is harder to vote than in others. There are two key groups that could be especially affected by the changes: racial minorities, who more often use drive-by and overnight voting, and seniors, who more often use mail-in ballots.
Before this law, Texas had already made it quite difficult to vote by mail. You have to be 65 or older, or prove you won’t be home on Election Day or for early voting, or that you have a disability that prevents you from voting in person. The new law does allow people to vote by mail if they are toward the end of a pregnancy.
The new law sets up very specific ID requirements to apply to vote by mail. You need to include your Texas driver’s license number, or the last four digits of your Social Security, on the application and the return envelope. (There are two lines under the flap of the envelope for this.)
If you forget to include either on the return envelope, or if your ID doesn’t match what the county has on file for you, your ballot application is rejected.
Because most of the people allowed to vote early are 65 or older, this rule could be disenfranchising the Republican base in Texas, which leans older and tends to vote more reliably than younger voters.
The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner reports that in February, counties rejected thousands of ballots because voters didn’t know to include their ID numbers on the envelope. The month before that, counties rejected a high number of ballot applications for similar reasons — as many as 25 to 30 percent. NBC News reports nearly half of mail ballot applications in El Paso County have been rejected, with election officials saying many long-standing voters have been caught up in extra layers of bureaucracy.
Jennifer Anderson is the top election official in Hays County, outside Austin. She said her county has been spending lots of time and money doing a “huge” outreach to voters — and still had to reject about 25 percent of mail ballot applications. As rejected ballot applications are sent back, she said, she hopes those rates will go down. “But this may still be a problem with smaller counties that don’t have as large of a staff and time to reach out to voters,” she warned.
Voters have to fix their mail ballot applications by Friday to receive one in time to vote in the primary. Election officials aren’t required to contact a voter by phone or email to let them know their ballot has been rejected. (They can mail it back, but only if there’s enough time before the election.)
Also, the new law strongly discourages voting by mail. Under this new law, public election officials could go to jail for telling voters they can vote by mail as an option, and officials can’t distribute an application to anyone who didn’t explicitly request one.
But there is an exception to this in the Houston and Austin areas, two Democratic strongholds in the state. A federal judge recently ruled that officials can encourage voters who meet the guidelines to vote by mail.
Popular ways to vote in Texas during the pandemic — especially in populous communities of color — are now eliminated. You can’t vote by drive-through; you have to go into the polling place (with the exception of curbside voting allowed for some voters with disabilities). Nor are there 24-hour polling places anymore.
If there’s another pandemic (or a natural disaster, or an ice storm), election officials are prohibited from altering voting practices to accommodate that. There is wiggle room if there’s an emergency involving the actual polling place. “You could still put a tent in a parking lot,” Anderson said.
If you qualify and successfully apply to vote by mail, you can’t drop off your ballot in a drop box; the law bans them — despite boxes being used in red and blue states that have offered voting by mail for years without problems.
The secretary of state is also required to check Texas voter rolls every month to see whether noncitizens are on them. Critics say that could knock off people who are citizens and eligible to vote but who weren’t when they applied for their driver’s license.
In Texas, you can vote two weeks before the election. However, the law codifies hours for early voting: It can’t start before 6 a.m. (or 9 a.m. on Sundays) and it has to end by 10 p.m. If you are in line on an early-voting day when polls are supposed to close, you can still vote.
Before this, the law allowed people to take time off work to vote only on Election Day. Now they can take time off work during the early voting period to vote.
It is also slightly easier to update your voter registration if you move. If you move anywhere in the state, you now can update your voter registration online, rather than filling out a form and mailing it in.
When you go to vote, expect to see a lot more observers around you. The law expands the rights of partisan poll watchers — people who volunteer or work for parties to observe voting and vote-counting — but it is vague about how to police them.
These poll watchers have to be allowed to move freely through the polling location at all times (though they can’t physically watch you vote).
The law does require these watchers to undergo training before they head to the polls, which county election officials say is a good thing.
But the law isn’t clear about what constitutes a violation to reprimand or kick out a poll watcher. By contrast, it is clear that partisan poll watchers can threaten litigation if they feel their rights are violated, and poll workers could face jail time for it.
One Texas election official told Gardner that has had a chilling effect on his ability to recruit poll workers. Anderson said she worries that good-faith poll workers, many of whom work for nominal pay, could be punished: “There’s a lot to know and a lot to learn, and there’s a lot of fear of a poll worker being charged with a crime for a mistake — which I know is not the intent of the law, but it can happen. That is concerning.”
It could have a chilling effect on voters, too. The law makes no recognition of the fact that Texas poll watchers have a history of intimidating voters of color. As the Associated Press reports: “As recently as 1962, Republican poll watchers in some parts of Texas challenged Black and Latino voters to read and explain the U.S. Constitution before casting ballots.”
Finally, most counties are required to set up a 24-hour live stream during ballot counting. Some counties’ election offices don’t have IT departments. Anderson said she wonders what the consequences are if a live stream goes out. Is that grounds for someone to contest an entire election?
“That’s the hardest part of this law,” she said. “There could be a lot of hiccups, and the law is strict with penalties for things going wrong.”
For example: Voters who need assistance reading a ballot or getting to a polling place may have a harder time getting it. There are a number of forms an assistant must fill out, including taking an oath “under penalty of perjury.” If you’re helping someone fill out their mail ballot, you have to explain your relationship to them, and you could face prosecution for not filling out your part of that form correctly.
If someone offers you money to drop off their mailed ballot, you can be criminally prosecuted for it — even if you didn’t know that was illegal. If someone offers you a favor in exchange for dropping off your ballot, you can also be prosecuted as a “vote harvester,” or someone who drops off signed and sealed ballots for other people — which is a felony in Texas.
Finally, people who offer to drive more than seven people at once to polling places must register their names and addresses with the secretary of state.
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/23/voting-texas-2022-primary/
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