Texas can block county election officials from offering more than one place to drop off their mail-in ballots, a federal appeals court ruled late on Monday, a blow to civil rights groups who argued the restriction made it needlessly harder for voters to cast ballots.
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Earlier this summer, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, issued a proclamation extending early voting in the state and allowing voters to return their mail-in ballots in person before election day. But after some of the state’s largest, and most Democratic counties announced they were setting up multiple locations for voters to return their ballots, Abbott issued a second proclamation only allowing counties to return their ballots in one place.
The decision most severely affected Harris county, which is nearly 2,000 sq miles, and planned to offer 12 drop boxes for its 2.4 million voters. Now, it only has one. The county is also home to a sizable chunk of minority residents; 20% of the county is Black and 43% are Hispanic.
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After a federal judge struck down Abbott’s restriction last week, a three-judge panel on the fifth circuit court of appeals put that decision on hold while the case made its way through the appeal process. They wrote that Abbott had actually expanded opportunities to vote recently. In that context, only allowing one place for voters to leave their ballots, the judges said, did not amount to a severe burden on the right to vote.
“One strains to see how it burdens voting at all,” the panel, all of whom were appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, wrote in their opinion. “The proclamation is part of the governor’s expansion of opportunities to cast an absentee ballot in Texas.”
Abbott, who praised the fifth circuit’s ruling, said the restrictions were necessary to prevent voter fraud (which is extremely rare) but declined to say how that would be the case. Texas already severely restricts mail-in voting to a select few groups of voters, including those who are aged 65 or older, have a disability, or are going to be out of their county for the entire election period. The people most likely to be affected by the governor’s order and forced to travel long distances will be senior citizens and people with disabilities.
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit was Ralph Edelbach, 82, who has a disability and lives in Cypress, north-west of Houston. He told the Guardian earlier this month he wanted to deliver his ballot in person after he read about widespread mail delays earlier this year. Under Abbott’s order, he will have to travel around 36 miles each way – about 40 minutes – to return his ballot to Harris county’s only return site.
“I do, in Texas, have the option of voting absentee and I’m exercising that right. There is no evidence that I’ve seen at all about any significant fraudulent voting going on anywhere,” he said.
Erum Salam contributed reporting
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