Conservative Appeals Court Rules Texans Have No Right to Vote by Mail – By Colin Kalmbacher (Law and Crime) / June 4 2020
A federal court on Thursday reversed a decision that expanded vote-by-mail in Texas due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
In a three-judge panel decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a lower court’s ruling that mandated Texas election officials provide absentee ballots to any voter who requests one out of fear of contracting the deadly contagion at physical polling locations.
The decision also takes a swipe at the San Antonio-based judge who issued the prior ruling in favor of increased voting access.
“In an order that will be remembered more for audacity than legal reasoning, the district judge intervenes just weeks before an election, entering a sweeping preliminary injunction that requires state officials, inter alia, to distribute mail-in ballots to any eligible voter who wants one,” the decision caustically notes. “But because the spread of the Virus has not given ‘unelected federal jud[ges]’ a roving commission to rewrite state election codes, we stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal.”
In late May, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery issued a sweeping, poetic and stinging rebuke of the Lone Star State’s official position viz. increased access to vote-by-mail during the ongoing pandemic:
Of the 3,929,214 original Americans, “We the People” as the new sovereign with the power to prevent a new despot belonged in the hands of only 235,753 white males who owned property.
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