“We are seeing an alarming number of ballots being rejected and local officials struggling to protect voter access as the deadline approaches,” Harris County election administrator Isabel Longoria said in a statement.
The new law, a major Republican priority after former President Donald J. Trump alleged widespread fraud in the 2020 election, added a host of new restrictions on voting in the state, including a ban on drive-through voting. and 24-hour voting, drop boxes, adding new identification requirements to absentee ballots and preventing local election officials from promoting absentee voting.
Republicans promised the law made it “easier to vote, harder to cheat.” But some Texas voters found the abstinence process far from easy, even those who are highly motivated.
In Corpus Christi, Linda White, 72, has been voting by mail with her husband Jack, 74, for several years. She is a Democrat, she said her applications have been rejected three times this year, as has her husband, a Republican.
The first time, they accidentally used an old form posted on the Texas Secretary of State’s website (the form was updated in January). They were then rejected for overlooking the fields for both their driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Finally, Ms. White printed a new application and she still did not see the required fields, so she wrote both identification numbers by hand on the side of her application.
That too was rejected.
“Had I not been just a determined, stubborn old woman, and my husband just as determined and stubborn, I would have given up after a few shots,” Ms White said in an interview.