what time should i go to the polls
HOUSTON — With less than two days until Texas' primary election, Cedric and Myrtis Tatterson sat in a community center gym in Houston to fulfill the training required of them equally election judges.
Though they have both served as judges in numerous past elections, Tuesday'southward primary will exist the first since Texas' Republican-controlled legislature passed a sweeping voting law with provisions that restrict access to the ballot.
Cedric, who said he has been involved in the struggle for voting rights for decades and marched in his youth with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago, said he's dismayed with Texas' efforts to make voting harder.
"Y'all sent me off to Vietnam fifty years ago to fight for this country, and we go backwards," said the 74-year-one-time veteran.
Myrtis said it pains her that all five of their children also live in Texas and have to suffer the consequences of the state's voter suppression tactics.
Texas' election on Tuesday volition exist the first primary contest in the country and will offer a preview for other states on how restrictive new voting laws will impact voter turnout and the administration of elections.
The legislation, signed into law past Gov. Greg Abbot in September 2021 in response to unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election, survived Autonomous lawmakers' efforts to block it past breaking quorum. The new police force includes stricter voter identification requirements that have already caused thousands of vote-past-mail applications and ballots to exist rejected across the land.
The legislation also gives more power to partisan poll watchers, which advocates fright will cause confrontations and intimidation at the polls on Ballot Day. And information technology places strict restrictions on people who help voters with disabilities, causing concerns that the helpers' aid will go out them liable for criminal penalties.
"The trouble with this new election constabulary and all the confusion that goes forth with information technology is that voters who are consistent voters probably volition keep to vote, but voters who would like to participate may go, 'This is just likewise much. Forget it. They manifestly don't desire me to vote,'" said Grace Chimene, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas.
"That is very concerning to me because in a democracy, nosotros should encourage all eligible voters to participate in an election and that is not what is happening right now," she added.
Despite the messy rollout of the new police force and its asymmetric impact on Texas' non-white voters, Republican lawmakers in other states are considering replicating aspects in their own states or already have passed their own laws. According to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, 19 states have enacted 33 laws since the 2020 election that make it harder for people to bandage ballots.
"The reason nosotros're seeing these problems in Texas is because they passed one of those bills and we are the start primary," said James Slattery, a senior staff attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. "If I were living in another state, ane of united states that passed a similarly sprawling ballot rewrite, I would be looking at this and think, 'This chaos and confusion and disenfranchisement is coming my style in just a few months.'"
New ID requirements
The GOP'due south restrictive voting law contains many new measures that will bear on the main, merely one of the most consequential has been new identification requirements for mail-in ballots. In Texas, just people over the age of 65 or those who are ill, disabled, or meet a small number of qualifications are permitted to vote by mail.
Credit: leonvotes.gov
The new law requires that voters casting a ballot by mail service include a land identification number like a Texas commuter's license number (or if they don't have one, the final 4 digits of their Social Security number) on the return envelope of their mail-in ballot application and election. The number must lucifer the identification number in the voter'southward record.
But problems speedily arose when it became articulate that voters don't necessarily take both possible ID numbers in their voter record and their awarding or ballot could exist rejected if they include the number that'south not on file.
"Admittedly no one is going to remember which number they used," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive managing director of Common Cause Texas, explaining that the law has led to "unheard of rates of rejection."
Myrtis Tatterson said she luckily put both her driver'south license number and Social Security number on her postal service-in ballot considering she has no recollection of when she registered to vote or which number she used at that fourth dimension.
Counties beyond the state reported that they had to refuse election applications and ballots that were missing ID numbers or that had ID numbers that were not on file.
Harris County, dwelling house to Houston, reported an alarmingly loftier rejection charge per unit for mail ballots. Harris County Elections Ambassador Isabel Longoria told NBC News that the county had to hire new staff early this year to deal with the surge of confused voters and rejected ballots.
Equally of Feb. 26, Harris County's election office said 29 per centum of post ballots have been flagged for problems that if unfixed, would mean the election would exist rejected.
The office said information technology has received 37,268 and x,876 of them have been flagged for corrections. Of those, 10,850 are flagged specifically due to the new ID requirements under the new election constabulary.
The number of potentially rejected ballots is likely to rise equally more than mail ballots arrive before Election Day, the office said. In past elections, the ballot rejection rate has been betwixt 5 and 10 pct.
More than than two weeks before the election, county officials asked the Section of Justice to step in and accost the "alarmingly high" rejection rate.
Other populous counties are reporting similarly high rejection rates. Officials in Dallas County reported they had to reject 26 per centum of postal service-ballots and officials in El Paso Canton said the rejection charge per unit was at 46 percent considering of missing ID numbers.
Advocates said lawmakers were enlightened that the constabulary could lead to voter confusion and rejected ballots, but moved forrad with it anyhow.
"Our organization and others pointed out to legislators when the bill was being debated last yr that these problems were probable going to present themselves," said Daniel Griffith, director of policy for the nonpartisan group Secure Democracy.
There is a process for voters to cure the mistakes on their ballot applications and ballots by vi days after the election, but the process is confusing for election attorneys, let alone voters. Counties themselves have struggled.
Counties are supposed to notify voters and give them an opportunity to correct the issue on their election. If there's a problem with their ID number, voters should exist able to access an online ballot tracking system to fix the ID number on file.
"What we're hearing is that in that location are currently problems with that statewide online election tracking organisation," Griffith said, although he added the problems accept not been verified. "I recall we can await, given all the other implementation issues that we've seen, that it's certainly not existence implemented to the extent that it needs to be to protect anybody's voice in democracy."
The secretary of land'due south office has also provided little communication to counties on how to implement the new constabulary.
"Counties didn't get guidance on how to implement these new rules until very late in the procedure," Slattery said.
Partisan poll watchers
Voting advocates are likewise expressing concerns that the new voting law expanded the power of partisan poll watchers in the polling place and restricted how election officials can command them.
"I don't mind poll watchers almost of the time, but my concern is that there are parties who volition use this every bit a manner to intimidate voters," Chimene said.
Gutierrez explained that Texas has a long history of poll watchers used in discriminatory ways and sent to intimidate voters in Black and Latino communities, specially in the Harris Canton area.
Last year, Mutual Cause Texas obtained a leaked video in which the Harris Canton Republican Party explained its plans for an "Ballot Integrity Brigade" to "build an army of 10,000 people" to serve as poll watchers and election officials to go from Houston's white suburbs into Black and Latino communities to monitor the polls.
The GOP official says that "this is where the fraud is occurring."
Despite Common Cause and other advancement groups' concerns, the legislature passed an expansion of power for partisan poll watchers, people who represent particular parties and are permitted to monitor polling places and vote counting.
Gutierrez said he'due south worried that poll watchers will be able to walk effectually polling sites and linger shut enough to voters to hear their conversations with clerks or ballot judges.
Under the new constabulary, it'south a misdemeanor for an election official to turn away an appointed poll watcher. Information technology's also now unlawful to obstruct a poll watcher from viewing voting or vote counting.
Poll watchers can just be removed from the polling site if an election official observes them straight violating election law.
"The process past which an ballot judge can kick a poll watcher out of the poll site if they're being disruptive is at present really complicated and the law is full of gray areas," he said.
"Nosotros're actually non sure how it's going to piece of work, if information technology'due south going to piece of work, if information technology'due south going to allow poll watchers to completely disrupt poll sites and basically shut them downward. It'south a lot of things to worry about."
But advocates said it'due south less likely this will exist a major issue in the main considering partisan poll watchers may not want to police force their own party'southward primary, and their concerns are more about the general election.
Voters with disabilities
Texas' new police force likewise affects people with disabilities and others who need assist to cast a ballot. At that place are new regulations governing people who provide assistance, limiting what they tin exercise to just reading and mark the ballots of an individual who cannot read or marking information technology themselves. They are no longer able to reply a voter'southward questions or talk to them about what's on the ballot.
"There's a lot of business concern about, 'If I do annihilation that isn't strictly one of those things, am I going to go to jail or something?" Slattery said.
The constabulary also limits the League of Women Voters, Chimene said, because the organization is no longer able to go to places like nursing homes to hand out mail service-in ballot application forms. She said the group is trying to apply alternative methods to help the voters directly, like sending information to nursing homes and assisted living centers for their staff members.
"We're concerned that's going to have a chilling effect on voters who are already vulnerable, like voters with disabilities," Griffith said. "That can already exist a difficult procedure at the polls and all of these new requirements, these new potential criminal charges, are merely going to compound that difficulty that these voters face."
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Source: https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/02/28/texans-go-to-the-polls-under-sweeping-new-voting-restrictions/
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