“Leaving the Governor’s October 1 Proclamation in place still gives Texas absentee voters many ways to cast their ballots in the November 3 election. These methods for remote voting outstrip what Texas law previously permitted in a pre-COVID world,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan for the panel of three judges all appointed by President Donald Trump. “The October 1 Proclamation abridges no one’s right to vote.”
Travis County had designated four locations and Harris County — home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the state of Rhode Island — had designated a dozen before Abbott’s order forced them to close most sites. Fort Bend and Galveston counties also planned to use multiple locations, according to court documents.
Voting rights advocates and local election administrators said the extra sites were critical for helping voters cast their ballots safely during the coronavirus pandemic. Texas is set to receive an unprecedented number of absentee ballots this year, and amid concerns over U.S. Postal Service delays, advocates say, in-person drop-off locations are critical.
Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins has not hesitated to say the governor’s decision amounts to voter suppression.
“To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous,” Hollins said earlier this month.
In some states, voters can simply leave their ballots in boxes outside town halls or local churches. Not in Texas, where voters must show an election worker an approved form of identification and can only bring their own ballot.
Abbott had argued that the measure was necessary to ensure election integrity, but he did not provide any evidence and his office did not answer questions about how limiting the highly regulated drop-off locations would do so. In court filings, lawyers for the Texas attorney general’s office wrote that some counties wouldn’t provide “adequate election security, including poll watchers” — “inconsistencies” that the state argued “introduced a risk to ballot integrity.”