Opinion | Republican voter suppression is bearing fruit in Texas - The Washington Post

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When Republicans in Texas passed measures last year to make their already rigid election laws even stricter, they claimed their changes would improve “election integrity.” In reality, they were an obvious attempt to subvert mail-in voting and other procedures that made in-person voting easier.

Now, the seeds of voter suppression, which have been planted by Republican-led state legislatures across the nation, are bearing fruit. In the past few days, thousands of absentee voters in Texas have learned that their ballots have been rejected due to their state’s new voter ID requirements. Now, they must scramble to make sure their vote will be counted in their state’s primary elections, which take place Tuesday. Many will surely be disenfranchised.

Some of Texas’s most populous counties have seen rejection rates for absentee ballots as high as about 30 percent in recent days, almost entirely due to the Republicans’ new requirements. In Harris County alone, which includes most of Houston, more than 10,000 absentee ballots were flagged for correction as of Feb. 26. For comparison, Texas rejected 8,304 ballots statewide in 2020.

Rejection rates will certainly fall as people correct information included in their ballots, but every rejection represents a headache for a voter, who must spend time and energy to rectify it. Election officials fear many will not be able to fix their ballots before the deadline. For some, including people who have disabilities, voting in person is not an option.

This chaos was entirely predictable. It is also unnecessary. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, Texas saw no major irregularities in the 2020 election. An audit conducted by the Texas secretary of state confirmed this.

Nevertheless, Republicans passed measures requiring absentee voters to submit their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number when casting a ballot, which must match information in that person’s voter record. The requirement resulted in widespread confusion among local election officials. Many voters saw their application for an absentee ballot rejected because their ID numbers were not on file. Others who were able to receive an absentee ballot saw their vote rejected because they didn’t see in the fine print on the ballot that they had to include their ID numbers a second time.

The voter ID rules are not the only measures that might depress voting in the state. Republicans have also made in-person voting more difficult, by eliminating procedures that were put in place during the coronavirus pandemic in Democratic-leaning cities such as Houston. They banned drive-through voting and prohibited 24-hour voting, which was particularly helpful for low-income shift workers unable to take time off to vote. And because these measures affected mostly urban areas, the overall effect could depress voting among minorities.

Voting should not be this hard. But last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly 20 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting. Voter suppression is a sign of a sick democracy. Texas is the first to show the symptoms, but as primary season gets underway, we will soon discover how far and how deeply the infection has spread across the country.

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Opinion | Republican voter suppression is bearing fruit in Texas - The Washington Post
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