New mail voter ID rules sow confusion in Texas with thousands of ballots at risk of rejection – By Jane C. Timm and Anjali Huynh (NBC News) / February 19, 2022
Voters can still fix ballots to have them counted in the March 1 primary, but county officials are concerned about the sky-high rate of errors due to confusion over the new election law.
New voting rules in Texas are tripping up voters at an unusual rate, putting thousands of ballots at risk of being rejected if voters don’t correct them soon, multiple county officials said.
Mail voting kicked off in January ahead of the state’s primaries on March 1 — the first contest of the 2022 midterm cycle — with early in-person voting beginning this week. Already, thousands of ballots have failed to meet the state’s new identification requirements, according to election officials.
Officials said they are mailing back ballots and sometimes calling and emailing voters to alert them to the problems with an explanation of how those ballots need to be corrected. But they also expressed concerns that many voters won’t fix their ballots in time.
In El Paso County, nearly half of all mail ballots returned so far have failed to satisfy new ID requirements, while 35 percent of ballots were flagged for rejection in Harris County for similar reasons, county officials told NBC News.
