The Texas Election Code – dictating when, where and how Texans can vote – stretches over 1,038 pages.
It was less than 200 pages about 40 years ago as the tapestry of rules and regulations has grown more complex with each passing session of the Texas Legislature.
In general, many election laws added in the 1980s and following decades favored convenience.
In 1986, for instance, the Legislature codified mail-in voting, a process now available to people 65 and older, sick, disabled or traveling. In 1991, lawmakers added early voting, which now accounts for more than half of all ballots cast. Curbside voting for those with disabilities came in 2002. Seven years later, voters were allowed to vote in any polling place within participating counties.
But in recent years, new laws that require proof of ID at polls and for mail-in ballots, prohibit 24-hour voting locations, and ban straight-ticket voting have prioritized security over convenience.
Some experts believe that voter restrictions are put in place to preserve the status quo and that efforts to bring in new voters and non-voters by easing access to voting are viewed as inherently partisan.
Anthony Fowler, a University of Chicago professor who studied the causes and consequences of voter turnout while at Harvard University, said Democrats generally favor increasing voter access under the theory that nonvoters will tend to support their candidates, and Republicans believe expanding the electorate could threaten their candidates.
“There’s no question that one reason why serious electoral reforms are politically challenging is that one political side is likely to believe that they would lose electorally from that reform,” he said.
Multiple studies have found that Republican-supported election laws, such as strict voter ID requirements, have had negative effects on the turnout of persons of color. But similar studies have found that the overall effect of those laws on election results is difficult to quantify.
Bitter partisan fights have played out over some of the more recent changes to Texas voter laws. They include:
- In 2011, Texas passed what was then considered the nation’s strictest voter ID law, which required a picture ID to cast a ballot with some exceptions.
- In 2017, lawmakers banned straight-ticket voting, although court challenges delayed the ban until 2020.
- In 2022, Texas began requiring mail-in ballot applications to include proof of identification, prohibited 24-hour polling places and made it a crime for election workers to solicit ballots by mail or restrict partisan poll watchers within polling locations.
Texas Republican lawmakers who supported the recent changes have said action was needed to restore flagging voter confidence in secure elections.
“This is a good bill — common-sense reforms, easier to vote, harder to cheat,” the author of a sweeping election security bill, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, said when the bill passed in 2022.
More recently, some Texas Republicans have supported efforts to limit early voting, end countywide voting and remove infrequent voters from registration rolls.
Recent Republican efforts to emphasize election security can be traced to former President Donald Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, said Joyce LeBombard, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas.
“Voter access has become political rather than being nonpartisan, and everybody should want every eligible voter to be able to vote,” LeBombard said. “There has been no, absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud in this state, but yet we continue to pass bills to make it harder to vote.”
It is difficult to quantify the impact of more recent election laws, many of which were challenged unsuccessfully in court. Some studies have found that voter ID laws have exacerbated the turnout gap between more racially diverse and less racially diverse counties.
On Tuesday, The Dallas Morning News will launch “Back To The Ballot,” an effort to educate voters on the election process and explore the causes of voter apathy and potential solutions.
A 2020 study found that the gap between Latino and white participation in elections doubled from 4.9 percentage points to 13.5 points in states with strict voter ID laws. Similar trends were seen for Black, Asian American and multi-racial voters. Turnout of white voters was largely unaffected by voter ID laws.
“These laws serve not only to diminish minority participation but also to increase the gap in the participation rate between whites and nonwhites,” the authors wrote.
In 2021′s omnibus election bill, Senate Bill 1, the Republican-driven law created new ID requirements for mail-in ballots.
As a result of the law, some North Texas elections offices saw the typical mail-in ballot rejection rate of about 1% spike more than tenfold under the new requirements that included submitting a Texas driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number that matched the number used to register to vote, often years earlier. (Texans can register to vote under either government ID number, but the number provided on their ballot must match whichever they used to register.)
In total, nearly 25,000 mail-in ballots were rejected in the 2022 primary largely because of the new ID number requirements. A New York Times investigation found that Black residents made up the largest racial group in six of the nine ZIP codes with the most ballot rejections in the county.
Some election officials rejected ballots without matching numbers, fearing that warning voters of the changes or answering questions about mail-in ballots would violate the new law that made it a felony for government workers to proactively provide mail-in ballot applications. Those concerns have since quieted after feared prosecutions never happened and leading lawmakers made assurances about the law’s restrictions.
Now, many election offices provide detailed instructions for filling out mail-in ballots, telling voters to provide both their driver’s license or Texas ID number and the last four digits of their Social Security number.
“It’s no longer a new thing,” Dallas County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia said. “We have learned from it, too. Elections officials across the state have learned our lessons. Our materials are much more suited” for mail-in voting.
Dramatic partisan fights surrounding proposals such as mail-in ballot restrictions or voter ID stem from each party’s fear of partisan disadvantages.
A 2021 study that focused on Texas found that universal access to mail-in ballots did little to affect turnout, and a 2020 Stanford University study found that universal access to mail-in votes had no partisan effect.
“It turns out, as a matter of fact, that a lot of these electoral reforms that turn out to be so politically divisive, when we conduct studies, they actually don’t have huge partisan effects,” said the University of Chicago’s Fowler.
The general effect of increased access to mail-in ballots was that more regular voters decided to cast their ballots by mail instead.
But changes have occurred. In Dallas County, for example, Republicans voted by mail at a greater rate than Democrats in every recent federal election until Republicans began attacking the security of mail-in ballots after the 2018 election.
The most recent political fights focused on mail-in voting after Harris County in 2020 attempted to provide universal access to ballots by mail as a COVID-19 safety measure. Republicans objected and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton halted the effort after he petitioned the Supreme Court of Texas.
The results of the 2020 election – Democrats control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress – have led many on both sides of the aisle to believe expanded access to mail-in ballots favored Democrats.
State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, has filed bills to limit mail-in voting and countywide voting that lets voters in many high-population counties, including Dallas, vote at the county polling location of their choosing. Hall said countywide voting places convenience above election security.
“I put security above convenience,” he said.
Hall said he plans to pursue both changes when the Legislature meets again in 2025.
“There’s no reason to send ballots out to people just because they turn 65,” Hall, 82, said in an interview.
Hall’s proposal to end blanket mail-in ballot eligibility for seniors reflects Texas Republican Party priorities. The party’s platform, approved by thousands of state delegates in May, calls for ending countywide voting and reducing the early vote period to the three days immediately preceding an election.
While the proposals are supported by the state GOP’s hardline base, similar proposals have failed at the Texas Legislature so far.
John Mott, voter director for the state Democratic Party, said he believes Republican election priorities reflect a fear Texas “is on the cusp of a Democratic majority.”
“They create obstacles at every turn: gerrymandering districts to favor Republicans; continuing archaic voter registration regulations; reducing polling places; promulgating restrictions on mail voting; enacting stricter voter ID laws; and empowering partisan poll watchers to make the voting process more difficult and intimidating,” Mott said in an email.
Abraham George, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, said the recent election laws have not prevented people from voting.
“Anyone who goes to the polls clearly knows there is no hindrance to people to show up and cast their ballot for either party honestly,” George said.
LeBombard said the League of Women Voters of Texas will continue its education and voter outreach efforts despite the highly partisan atmosphere.
“We try to look at the facts around the issues and form our positions,” she said. “And, you know, we’re always going to come down on the rights of voters.”
Staff writer Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report.