As the 2022 primary election nears, the Cameron County Elections Department is still figuring out how to implement some of the changes to voting imposed by Senate Bill 1, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept. 7.
Gone, for instance, thanks to SB1 is drive-through voting, which proved highly popular among county voters during Election Day 2020, which witnessed record turnout.
“We’re doing our best to adapt to all the changes,” Elections Administrator Remi Garza said. “Some of the changes don’t affect us directly because either we were already doing the new requirements as just part of our best practices. But some are a little more detailed and require more thought as to how exactly we’re going to pull them off.”
SB1 was pitched by Republican legislators and Abbott as necessary to protect elections against voter fraud, which is extremely rare in Texas, the state attorney general’s office having received just 197 election fraud complaints statewide between 2015 and 2020.
Still, anyone voting by absentee/mail-in ballot is now required to include a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number on the ballot’s return envelope. SB1 also requires local election officials to allow individuals to correct an improperly filled out ballot as long as enough time remains before the polls close on Election Day.
“If they’re voting by mail, we certainly encourage them as strongly as we can to read all the instructions,” Garza said. “We know it can be a lot when you get one of those packets, but it’s important that they follow them and comply with any requirements so that we can get their ballots accepted.”
The new envelope for returning ballots is perforated to protect voters’ personal information and it’s important that it not be pulled or torn, he said.
SB1 also makes it a felony for local election officials to proactively distribute mail-in ballot applications, even to voters who are automatically eligible to vote by mail or to get-out-the-vote groups. Early-voting hours are extended under the new law, requiring that polls are open at least nine hours (rather than eight hours under the previous law), from no earlier than 6 a.m. to no later than 10 p.m.
Garza noted that some voters have been confused about which number to provide on their application for a mail-in ballot.
“We’ve seen about a 10 percent of Democratic ballot applications rejected for the ID information being incorrect, and a higher percentage for Republicans, but it represents a smaller number of applications received,” he said.
About 40 percent of the applications for the Republican primary have been rejected by the state, though it represented only about 70 applications, Garza said.
Meanwhile, add elections to the long list of things being affected by supply-chain issues.
“We’ve struggled with getting materials from our vendors with respect to the paper shortages that are being experienced throughout the country,” Garza said. “In fact, we were behind on getting our ballots by mail out to the voters by at least a week, because we were waiting for the materials to actually send out.”
Ballots were mailed out Feb. 7, however, and voters should be receiving them soon if they haven’t already, he said.
“It’s been hectic in the sense of just having to rethink out approaches on certain aspects of what we do and to make sure that we’re complying with all the changes that have been implemented,” Garza said. “We’re receiving guidance from the secretary of state’s office as it’s available, and they’re being much more communicative than they have in the past. So we’re doing our best to make sure that we don’t impact the voters in any way that isn’t necessary.”
SB1 also establishes that any individual assisting a voter must sign under penalty of perjury a document attesting that the voters requires assistance due to physical disability or inability to read the ballot language. It also gives partisan poll watchers “free movement” inside polling places and makes election officials who deny access to poll watchers subject to criminal prosecution.
In addition to making it a felony for an election official to send a vote-by-mail application to someone who does not request one, it is now a crime under SB1 for an individual to conduct “interaction with one or more voters, in the presence of the ballot or during the voting process, intended to deliver voters for a specific candidate or measure” in exchange for money or other benefits.
Garza said the new rules don’t affect all voters equally.
“One is it provides more layers of security and compliance, but on the other side it does change the way voters are casting their ballots in Cameron County,” he said. “Those changes can have a negative impact for some voters and be a positive influence for others. We’ve received some push-back from some of our applicants for ballot by mail with respect to having to provide additional information, but all in all it seems like people are responding to our requests to fix their applications so we can accept them.”
Garza said his department already had several measures in place to ensure the county’s election complied with state law, and that the additional documentation requirements of SB1 “appear to have added more bureaucracy to the process.”
He reminded voters to contact the Elections Department or visit its website to find out if their precinct had changed due to redistricting, which can also change which candidates an individual can vote for.
“We’re still precinct based and we’ve done everything to keep our polling locations in the same spaces, the same buildings, but you may have been shifted to a new precinct and need to keep an eye out for that,” Garza said.
Despite the extra hoops voters may have to jump through because of SB1, it’s important for every eligible voter to cast a ballot since a functioning democracy depends on it, he said.
“I certainly think it’s well worth every effort to make sure that we’re exercising our right to vote,” Garza said.
Early voting starts Feb. 14, the last day to apply for a ballot-by-mail is Feb. 18, and the last day of early voting is Feb. 25. Election Day is March 1.
MORE INFOMATION:
Cameron County Elections Department
PHONE: (956) 544-0809
EMAIL: [email protected]
WEB: cameronvotes.com
