New Texas voting laws are causing a lot of problems for Republican voters, according to a Newsy report ahead of the primary run-off elections Tuesday.
As the report notes, several new rules passed by Texas Republicans in the wake of the 2020 elections put more stringent requirements on mail-in ballots.
One rule passed by Republican lawmakers mandates that voters must put either their driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on the envelope containing their ballot.
This has led to a higher number of rejected ballots: Ballot rejections in 2020 ran about 0.8 percent, but in 2022 they're at 12 percent. The number might seem low, but that's equal to at least 7,000 people in one Texas county.
Republicans had a higher rate of error than Democrats, meaning there are thousands more Republicans in the state whose ballots aren't being counted in the primary election.
In March, during the initial primary elections, just 16 of the state's largest counties had more than 18,000 mail-in ballots that were rejected because they missed the tiny fine print.
One elderly Republican voter noted that the question about the driver's license or social security number was printed so small she couldn't read it. Newsy said they calculated it was seven-point font. National election standards that benefit visually impaired people require nothing can be smaller ten-point font.
The first time Texas voted with the new ballot was March 1, so when the state passed the law in December, they had very little time to print the ballots and get them out to voters. But, two months later, for the run-off elections, the ballots are still a mess, the report said.
See the full report below or at this link.
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