A federal appeals court ruled late Monday night to uphold Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive that allows each county in the state to have one ballot drop box.
Early voting in Texas begins Tuesday. Some counties wanted multiple ballot drop-off locations — Harris County, which includes Houston, wanted 12 locations. But Abbott issued a proclamation on Oct. 1 limiting early-voting ballot collection to “a single early voting clerk’s office location that is publicly designated by the early voting clerk” in each county, leaving Harris County’s 4 million residents one drop-off location.
“The State of Texas has a duty to voters to maintain the integrity of our elections,” Abbott said in a statement. “As we work to preserve Texans’ ability to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic, we must take extra care to strengthen ballot security protocols throughout the state. These enhanced security protocols will ensure greater transparency and will help stop attempts at illegal voting.”
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturns a Friday ruling from U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman that temporarily blocked Abbott’s order, according to the Texas Tribune. Pitman’s ruling said that the directive “confused voters and restricted voter access.”
“By limiting ballot return centers to one per county, older and disabled voters living in Texas’s largest and most populous counties must travel further distances to more crowded ballot return centers where they would be at an increased risk of being infected by the coronavirus in order to exercise their right to vote and have it counted,” Pitman wrote.
The appeals court ruled that because the coronavirus pandemic has already expanded early voting by nearly a week and allowed for ballots to be “hand-delivered before and up to Election Day (40 extra days),” the lower court “erred in analyzing the Plaintiffs’ voting-rights and equal protection claims.”
“The district court vastly overstated the ‘character and magnitude’ of the burden allegedly placed on voting rights by the October 1 Proclamation,” the ruling stated. “Leaving the Governor’s October 1 Proclamation in place still gives Texas absentee voters many ways to cast their ballots in the November 3 election. These methods for remote voting outstrip what Texas law previously permitted in a pre-COVID world. The October 1 Proclamation abridges no one’s right to vote.”
