Texas tossed tens of thousands of mail-in ballots

A total of 24,636 mail-in ballots were rejected throughout Texas in the March 1 primary election, the Texas secretary of state's office said Wednesday.

That's a 12.38% rejection rate — far higher than in previous contests.

[...]

"The rejection rate went up by a factor of 12 since the last election," he said. "The only reason that the rejection rate soared this high is that Senate Bill 1 imposed this new ID requirement and it is disenfranchising eligible voters."

Under SB 1, voters have to provide a partial Social Security number or driver's license number on their mail ballot application — as well as on the return envelope. The ID number they provide has to match what's on their voter registration record.

Many voters either completely missed the new ID portion of the return envelope or had mismatched IDs, local officials said.

Some county election officials reported that up to 40% of ballots that were returned were initially flagged for rejection. Eventually some voters were able to fix their ballots, but many voters were not.

[...]

Officials in Harris County — home to Houston, and the state's most populous county — had said they ultimately rejected 19% of the mail-in ballots they received.

  

You know what else Harris County has? A high population of blacks.

According to state data, there was a slightly higher final rejection rate among ballots cast in the Democratic primary compared with the Republican primary.

[...]

A total of 14,281 Democratic ballots were rejected, and 10,355 Republican ballots were rejected.

Democrats better get out a big voter education program before November.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.