The law that says every individual who wishes to vote by mail must make application to do so every year is ludicrous. Like getting your DL re-issued each year. To offset that Harris and other large counties would annually send out applications to those who had voted by mail in the previous elections. And we suspect them doing this led to the provisions in SB1 making it illegal for those counties to continue to send out unrequested applications.
So the question is how well did that work? How many people didn't vote because the rules changed and they weren't aware of that? While there were a lot of ballots rejected, I would bet for every one rejected there were at least 5, maybe 10, that were never cast because they simply didn't understand what they needed to do. Fortunately they still have time to get in applications for the rest of this year's elections.
I still think this is all intended to make voting so complicated it will lead to more mistakes like the 10,000 votes not included in Harris Co. The Republicans have no problem in losing good to excellent election administrators so in the near future there is even more turmoil. And the more turmoil and screw ups, the more argument they will have to say no elections can be trusted. Then what happens? I guess they will propose community committees which will determine our representatives, instead of elections. I really don't know. But I do know they are destroying our current system by undermining its credibility. I just don't know what they plan to do once it's laid low.
While our Republicans in Austin might not be the brightest, they certainly are good at conniving.