Though the 2020 presidential election is in the rear-view mirror, many citizens and lawmakers still have plenty of questions. Election integrity will be a very serious issue moving forward.
One of those hot-button issues involves mail-in voting, and how the system should be altered or repaired (if necessary). And in some cases, Democrats want to change the existing rules.
Take what just happened in Texas, for example.
Currently, the voting laws in Texas state that only certain people are eligible to cast a mail-in ballot:
Texas state law makes mail-in ballots available only for people age 65 and older or for voters who meet specific disability guidelines.
But Democrats wanted mail-in voting to be available to everyone. They claimed the aforementioned rule violated the U.S. Constitution’s 26th amendment, which guarantees everyone the right to vote.
So, they took their case to the courts.
It didn’t result in a victory, though, as the Supreme Court just ruled against the Democrat idea. As reported by The Daily Wire (via Reuters):
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled for the state of Texas and against the Texas Democratic Party as they decided to leave in place a lower court ruling that rejected Democrats’ attempts to let all eligible voters in Texas vote by mail.
It shouldn’t be too surprising that Democrats tried to push this through.
After all, mail-in balloting heavily favored Democratic candidate Joe Biden during the November election. So of course, they’d want everyone to have the mail-in voting option.
However, the Supreme Court didn’t see it this way.
Here’s part of the court’s decision:
The record indicates Texas is taking the kinds of precautions for voting that are being used in other endeavors during the pandemic. None of them guarantees protection.
There are quite reasonable concerns about voting in person, but the state’s mandating that many voters continue to vote in that way does not amount to an absolute prohibition of the right to vote.
This ruling lifts a previous injunction from a Texas state court that said everyone could vote via mail-in ballot. That won’t be allowed anymore, and the existing Texas law will be upheld.
Democrats will likely view this as a significant defeat.
In the future, voters will have to qualify for a mail-in ballot — not everyone over the age of 18 will be able to vote that way. And that could prove beneficial to Republicans in upcoming elections.
Source: Reuters