With only a month before Election Day, a legal battle is erupting in Texas over an order this week by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, …
With only a month before Election Day, a legal battle is erupting in Texas over an order this week by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to limit the number of drop-off locations for voters to cast absentee ballots. Voter-advocacy groups moved swiftly to block the order with a lawsuit asserting that the limited access would disenfranchise many of the state’s most vulnerable voters, depriving them of the opportunity to vote absentee rather than risk exposure to Covid-19. The order, which applies to the entire state, would limit each county to just one drop-off location. It has provoked an intense pushback in Texas’s most populous counties, including Harris, where Houston is located, and Travis, home to Austin. The lawsuit said that voters in those counties, both of which lean Democratic, will now be forced to “travel further distances, face longer waits and risk exposure” to the virus to mail their ballots at a single location.
