Is this about making it easier to vote like the laws that were passed claimed?

"Under Texas' new voting law, known as Senate Bill 1, voters have to provide a partial Social Security number or driver's license number on their mail ballot application — as well as on the return envelope. And the ID number they provide has to match what's on their voter registration record, which could be from decades ago.

Davis said this new requirement tripped up an unprecedented number of voters. He and his staff helped many of them fix their ballots, but some voters did not fix their ballot in time to be counted.

"So many of those folks didn't have a chance, either because there wasn't enough time or because they had given up," he said. "We encountered some folks who had given up and said, 'Forget it, I have too many other things going on in my life.' "

Besides issues with matching ID numbers, there was also a big issue with voters flat out missing the ID portion of their ballot's return envelope. The ID field was located under the envelope flap, which Davis said is easy to miss.

"The design of the envelope is problematic, in my opinion," he said, "given that there are a lot people that don't give a second thought to something that is obscured upon sealing and mailing."

The Texas secretary of state's office said this was a problem across the state.

"Based on what we have heard from county election officials, the vast majority of mail-in ballot rejections were due to voters who did not provide any ID information on their carrier envelope," Sam Taylor, assistant secretary of state for communications, said in a statement.

Davis says he understands the reason behind the ballot's design is the need to shield personally identifiable information.

"But the flipside of that was that this is an area of a document, or of an envelope, that lots of voters didn't pay much attention to," he said. "And that was precisely the area they needed to pay attention to.""
[Post edited by CMUHoo at 03/16/2022 10:57PM]