Vote-by-mail applications face rising rejection rate over new Texas voting law

EL PASO, Texas — A large number of El Paso county vote-by-mail voters are seeing their application returned to them with a rejection notice as the March primary election gets ever closer. 

“It’s definitely too high of a rejection rate when normally we wouldn’t have that,” Lisa Wise, the county’s elections administrator, explained. 

Wise looked to the past to give some perspective. In the 2020 presidential election, there were 36,000 applications to vote by mail. Only 380 of them were rejected. That’s just a 1 percent rejection rate. But this primary election, Wise says her department has already rejected 770 of the 3,482 applications. That’s a 22 percent rejection rate. 

This rise in the rejection rate is thanks to one of the changes to Texas elections that was brought on by SB 1, the bill passed by the Texas legislature in the most recent legislative session. 

More specifically, mail voters now have to provide either their Texas driver’s license, personal identification number, or the last four digits of their social security number when they apply for a mail ballot. Those numbers have to match the information you gave when you registered to vote, and many people, especially those over the age of 65, have forgotten which form of ID they used to register to vote.

For example, if you used your social security number to register to vote but provide your driver’s license number in your application, your mail ballot will be denied. 

“Older voters, I understand, don’t remember if they were like me,” Carol Wallace, the president of the League of Women Voters, explained. Wallace herself is 75 years old and feels the new vote-by-mail requirements are impacting older voters negatively. 

It’s an easy fix. The elections department will send the rejection letter to a voter with information on how to fix it, along with another application. But Wise says they are not seeing those applications returned. 

“Any time you have additional information required, anytime someone has to put something else back in the mail, we don’t see the numbers we’d like to see on responding to that,” Wise said. 

In order to avoid this issue, Wise is recommending that anyone filling out the application fill in both your ID number and the last 4 digits of your social security number just to be safe. 

If you would like to vote by mail, you can find the new application here. You are also advised to call the elections department if you have any questions at the number 915-546-2154. 

The deadline to have your application at the elections department is February 18.

Those who are eligible to vote-by-mail are people 65 and older, those who will be out of the county during the election, women who are expecting to give birth three weeks before or after the election, and those with disabilities.