A Texas trial is challenging that state’s new voting law. A New York Times article, ‘My Vote Was Rejected’: Trial Underway in Texas Over New Voting Law, covers this issue. The sub-heading reads, “Voting rights advocates say the law, intended to curb fraud, is impeding people with disabilities, older voters and non-English speakers.” As Edgar Sandoval opens the report:
For years, Stella Guerrero Mata, a 73-year-old retired school bus driver who lives near Houston, has been able to cast her vote through the mail with little hassle. Ms. Mata, who uses a cane to walk and suffers from a long list of ailments, including diabetes, worsening eyesight and back pain, expected the 2022 midterm elections to be no different.
But sometime after she placed her ballot in the mail, she received a letter with news that left her angry and confused. Her ballot was not accepted because she had failed to include her driver’s license number and the last four digits of her Social Security number, a requirement of a contested new voting law that was approved in 2021.
“My vote was rejected,” Ms. Mata said, adding that she had realized it was too late for her to correct her mistake. “It made me feel angry, because my voice was not being heard.”
The article provides an example of the new mail-in ballot form. Note that the section for her license and Social Security information is prominent among the other lines she presumably had no trouble filling out.
Does this rise to the level of Ms. Mata’s draconian claim the “my voice was not being heard?” Of course her voice was heard. She got a response letter of explanation—her own oversight.
Sandoval goes on to report:
The law added new voter identification requirements for voting by mail; made it harder to use voter assisters; set criminal penalties for poll workers if they are too forceful in reining in people at polling places; and banned 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, measures that were notably used in Harris County during the pandemic.
Other than the mail-in example of Ms. Mata’s encounter with new voter identification requirements cited at the outset of the article, no other examples of how the new law hampers anyone’s ability to vote, except near the end where a disabled man objected to providing proof of disability related to his need to have someone assist him in voting. He was still able to use a voter assister, and cast his vote. Maybe some other examples of voting difficulty under the new law will emerge as the trial proceeds. As of now, only assertions.
Note that no one is claiming that the law makes it too hard to vote. It only states that the new requirements make it “harder” for some people. Perhaps these points are arguable. Perhaps some tweakings of the law may be in order. But how easy does voting have to be? Any voting procedure requires some effort, thus making it harder. The term “harder” begs the question, “Is it a real hardship, or just marginally harder?’
The law is intended to minimize the possibility of voter fraud, although little evidence of fraud has surfaced in recent elections under the old laws. It also “allows for expanded early-voting hours to encourage more voter participation.”
My frustration over the Dems’ hyperbolic voting rights hysteria boiled over a little when I posted this comment, which is slightly edited:
A driver's license and SS number? That's it?!? And she's "angry"?; "confused"? Well, maybe she should be embarrassed for her own incompetence. Maybe if she followed the ultra-simple instructions, she wouldn't have to worry that her "voice was not being heard" (whatever that means—we're talking about her vote, not her freedom of speech). I know this is the age of "it's-all-someone-else's-fault." But give me a break! This woman should take responsibility for her own actions. Instead, she blames the law for her own screw up. That's a new low. Shame on Ms. Mata. And shame on the simpletons who cite examples like this as somehow "proving" some kind of conspiratorial GOP attack on the right to vote. If this is the best the Left can come up with, it's much ado about nothing.
I've said this many times. Nowhere in America is it hard for any reasonable, minimally motivated person to vote. Yes, some novel, COVID era emergency voting procedures are being streamlined or removed. But they were, after all, emergency measures. And yes, some reforms may be debatable. That notwithstanding, the Left's manufactured hysteria over voting rights is second in irrationality only to its fraudulent, Chicken Little climate crisis-mongering. In fact, never in America's history has voting been easier. If someone can't follow simple procedures, they should blame no one but themselves.
Related Reading:
Jesse Jackson’s Big Lie: ‘American Democracy is Under Siege’
Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right
The Strategic yet Self-Defeating Hyperbole of 'Democracy in Peril' Journalism by Matt Welch for Reason
Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis
Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right.
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