(Reuters) – A U.S. district judge blocked on Friday an order from Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott limiting the number of drop-off sites allowed for absentee ballots statewide to just one per county, a constraint Democrats denounced as blatant voter suppression.
Abbott’s Oct. 1 absentee voter proclamation, which he said aimed to prevent election fraud, required the closure of more than a dozen satellite drop-off box locations in at least two counties.
But U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, siding with voting rights advocates who challenged Abbott’s move, found it would create voter confusion and force absentee voters wishing to deliver their mail ballots in person to travel farther, wait in longer lines and risk greater exposure to the coronavirus.
Abbott’s order was imposed after absentee voting in the state had begun for the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election, with multiple absentee-ballot collection sites advertised in some counties for weeks.
Drop-off sites were set up to allow absentee voters to personally submit ballots in advance, rather than depending on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver them by mail on time, while also avoiding potentially crowded polling places on Election Day.
Texas is a longtime Republican stronghold, but this year President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, are waging what could be a tight race to win the state’s 38 electoral votes.
Texas is one of the few U.S. states that limit who can request absentee ballots – only voters who are over the age of 65, have a disability, are confined to a jail or will be out of town on the day of the election can vote by mail.
Abbott’s order would have been especially burdensome for absentee voters in the state’s most sprawling jurisdictions, such as Harris County, which includes the city of Houston and is a Democratic stronghold.
“To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous,” Harris County clerk Chris Hollins said, referring to an area equivalent to 5,180 sq. km.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by William Mallard and Clarence Fernandez)
