AUSTIN — Ten Democratic members of Congress, led by Dallas Rep. Colin Allred, on Wednesday called on the Department of Justice to monitor the ongoing audit of 2020 election results in Collin, Dallas, Tarrant and Harris Counties.
Allred’s request to the Department of Justice comes as elections remain in the forefront in both Texas and Washington.
In the past several days, elections administrators in North Texas and in several of Texas’ largest counties have reported having to reject hundreds of applications for mail-in ballots because of new election laws.
Elections administrators in Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton Counties are reporting large increases in the number of mail-in ballot applications they are rejecting this year due to changes in election laws passed by the Legislature last year.
In Dallas County, nearly 41% of mail-in ballot requests were rejected as of Friday, an office spokesman said. In Collin County, election administrator Bruce Sherbet said his office has rejected roughly 10% of applications.
Through last Thursday, about 40% of ballot requests in Tarrant County had been rejected because of issues with ID numbers, that county’s Election Administrator Heider Garcia said. The elections administrator for Denton County told CBS DFW that his office had rejected 40% of applications.
The rejection rates are “absolutely higher,” said Sherbet, who said rejection rates for absentee ballots usually fall between 2% and 3%.
Their request also comes about three weeks since the Texas Secretary of State’s office released initial findings in the audit that showed no significant irregularities. Despite the office having already declared the 2020 election “smooth and secure,” Gov. Greg Abbott helped ensure it was conducted after former President Donald Trump applied pressure.
Trump won Texas by more than 5 percentage points. But the former president has continued to falsely assert that widespread voter fraud cost him the election, and in September he called on Abbott to add a full audit of the state’s election results to the special session agenda. Abbott appeared to partially acquiesce in a matter of hours with the announcement of the four-county audit.
The members of Congress, which also include Dallas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson and Fort Worth Rep. Marc Veasey, said in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke that they “have serious concern that this audit may be an attempt to invalidate properly cast ballots in the 2020 Presidential election.”
New election law
The upcoming party primaries will be the first statewide elections held since the controversial election law SB 1 took effect. The bill and many others passed last year took aim at what Republicans call activist county election officials who used the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine election security. Critics believe the laws are thinly veiled voter suppression measures designed to disenfranchise non-white voters.
Across North Texas, more than 600 mail-in ballot applications have been rejected, administrators reported. The main reason is that for the first time, prospective voters from home must provide either a Texas ID number or the last four digits of their social security number on their application.
“There’s no question that it’s the Senate Bill 1 requirements — that the numbers be on there,” Sherbet said.
The new law is vexing elections administrators across the state. In Bexar County, an elections official last week reported that half of the applications received were being rejected, the San Antonio Report reported. In Harris County, roughly 12.5% of applications have been rejected,and in Travis County, about 27% of applications were rejected, the Travis County Clerk said Monday at a press conference.
Administrators also are having to deal with changes to the law that make it a felony to send out any absentee applications unsolicited. Several administrators who spoke to The Dallas Morning News gave the example of having to refuse an application to someone trying to request an application for themselves and their spouse. Under the new law, counties can only mail an application for the individual who makes the request, with no exceptions for the disabled or family members.
“In the past we would be able to give that out and now we cannot under SB 1,” said Mike Scarpello, Dallas County’s election administrator.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin cited how SB 1 has led to increased rejections on the Senate floor Wednesday during debate over voting rights legislation that likely will fail due to a lack of Democratic votes to change filibuster rules.
“This is straight out of the Jim Crow playbook,” Durbin said of the Texas law and others.
That is not the only issue. The League of Women Voters of Texas has raised concerns about its ability to give out voter registration packets to new citizens. The non-partisan group has provided registration cards at immigrant naturalization ceremonies across the state for years.
“It is fundamentally important to our organization to get these new citizens registered to vote,” said Grace Chimene, president of the League of Women Voters Texas.
The Secretary of State’s office said supply chain and cost issues have reduced the number of voter registration forms they have to distribute this year. Chimene said in Harris County alone, the League of Women voters can register 30,000 new voters a year.
The group in Harris County requested 16,000 from the Secretary of State’s office, but was told the office could only provide 1,000 to 2,000 initially, according to office spokesman Sam Taylor. The shortage was first reported by the public radio station KUT.
The office also provides registration forms to principals at high schools and other organizations. Taylor said sample forms have been provided to organizations, which they can print themselves.
But Chimene said the League of Women Voters of Texas has long relied on the Secretary of State to provide registration forms. It has left her scrambling to fundraise so they can obtain their own elsewhere.
“It is really important that we find that money and provide this service to these newly naturalized citizens,” she said.
