The midterm elections are less than two months away, and Republicans have been working since the last presidential election to restrict access to mail-in voting.
At least 18 states, most of which are run by Republican-controlled legislatures, have placed new limits on mail-in voting in an attempt to fight voter fraud. The new restrictions include requiring extra voter ID and shortening the time frame for voters to request their mail-in ballot and send it in, according to Reuters.
Texas passed a law in 2021 requiring election workers to reject mail-in ballots or applications if voters use different means of ID from what they provided when registering to vote. The state’s March primary had a 12.4% rate in ballot rejections, compared to the 0.8% mail ballot rejection rate during the 2020 election, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.
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Not all states are making it harder to vote by mail, however, as at least 22 states have expanded access to mail-in voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and Voting Rights Lab.
The push to restrict mail-in voting, a nontraditional method for voters to cast their ballots in an election, comes after a dramatic increase in the method during the 2020 election, in part over COVID-19 safety concerns. Former President Donald Trump has insisted that mail-in voting is insecure as part of his heavily disputed claims that he lost the 2020 election.
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On Friday, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced the Election Integrity Unit, which is intended to provide legal advice to the Department of Elections and to investigate and prosecute violations of Virginia election law. Miyares’s office claimed the creation of this unit is “to ensure uniformity and legality in application of election laws, and work with law enforcement to ensure legality and purity in elections.”
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the Washington Examiner has been tracking five different topics that many are focusing on ahead of the elections: abortion, inflation, education, taxes, and crime. On Sept. 5, education experienced the highest volume of Google searches, followed by crime and taxes.
