A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law requiring voters to provide an identification number before casting ballots by mail, plus scolded voting rights activists and a lower court for their efforts to undermine the state’s statute.
The court went even further, delivering a forceful statement about the dangers of mailed ballots.
“It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “That is why voting by mail jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.”
The case involves a law that was approved by the state Legislature in 2021.
After the chaos of the 2020 pandemic-infected vote, the Legislature sought to rewrite the rules about how ballots would be cast in Texas.
That included restrictions on ballot harvesting and rules on proving a voter’s identity — both of which were at stake in Wednesday’s ruling.
A lower court had sided with the voting and minority rights groups, finding that the law violated federal protection for disabilities.
Judge Oldham, a Trump appointee, said the groups generally lacked standing. He also said five years of experience under the law have shown it hasn’t unduly denied people the right to vote.
And he chided the groups — and U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, a George W. Bush pick — for intransigence on the law.
Judge Oldham called the groups “serial litigants” who sued even before the law was enacted. And he said the appeals court has been “staying, vacating and reversing” Judge Rodriguez “ever since.”
“In short, we have been playing an exhausting game of Whac-A-Mole to correct the district court’s mishandling of this case,” Judge Oldham wrote.
The ruling — and its forceful statement about problems with mail balloting — comes as President Trump and Republicans in Congress push for a federal law requiring proof of citizenship before voters can register, and identification when they cast ballots.
Mr. Trump has been particularly heated over mail ballots, arguing they’re a weak spot in elections.
Democrats resist changes, saying noncitizen voting isn’t a serious problem and requiring identification would deny vulnerable populations the chance to vote.
A bill to require identification failed in a party-line Senate vote last week.
Texas’ law requires voters who use mail ballots to provide either a Social Security number or an identification number that matches state records in order to cast their ballot.
The law also requires those who assist voters casting mailed ballots to sign an oath affirming they didn’t coerce those voters, and it asks the assisters to disclose if they’re being paid by a campaign or political committee.
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