San Antonio Express-News: Texas Secretary of State scrambles to address mail ballot application problems as deadline looms

As the Texas Secretary of State hustles to train and equip county election officials to implement new ID requirement for absentee voters that is creating confusion across the state, Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir offered advice to voters.

“The best thing to do when faced with voter suppression — and my friends, this is what voter suppression looks like — the best thing to defeat it is to go vote,” DeBeauvoir, a Democrat, said at a news conference Tuesday. “The best thing to do is fight back.”

The law, passed by the state’s Republican majority last year and in effect as of Dec. 2, added requirements for voters to include a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number. The new law also required that voters be allowed to correct mistakes on their mail ballot applications with the click of a button using an online state system.

But with less than a month left for voters to request mail ballots ahead of the Feb. 18 deadline for the March 1 primaries, mail ballot applications are being rejected by the hundreds, voters are confused about what information to include with their applications, and counties have not yet received training on how to use the online system to fix them. The state will hold its first webinar on the ballot tracker site Thursday. …

The issue has drawn the ire of voting rights groups like Common Cause and the League of Women Voters who have for years pushed the state to move to allow online voter registration. Texas is one of eight states that does not offer it. The League depends on the state’s paper copies to provide new citizens with the forms in their welcome packets at naturalization … ceremonies.

“This is a problem that’s easily solvable,” said Common Cause executive director Anthony Gutierrez. “We ask that the state immediately take steps to fix this problem that they have manufactured. It’s time for the state of Texas to join the 21st century, and the rest of the country, and provide online voter registration to every eligible voter in Texas.”