Texas ballot box decision derided as ‘voter suppression’

HOUSTON, Texas (NBC) – Advocates and elected officials in Houston are calling on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to rescind the order he issued last week that limits the number of mail-in ballot drop-off sites to one per county.

This is the one site for all of Harris County, the largest in Texas, with more than 4 million people. It became the lone ballot drop off-site, down from 12, after Governor Abbott’s order.

The governor has since come under sharp criticism, including from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner who called the order “voter suppression.”

Turner said he knows of three lawsuits that have already been filed to reverse Abbott’s order and that he has instructed the city’s legal department to participate in those lawsuits.

Abbott said Thursday that his order is meant to strengthen voting security and prevent illegal voting attempts during the coronavirus pandemic.

Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins called the move “unsafe” and “prejudicial”… and vowed to call the governor to task in court. He said, “Harris County is a humongous county. It’s larger than the state of Rhode Island. It has a population that’s larger than the entire state of Colorado and so to have all of those absentee ballots, those seniors, those hundreds of thousands of folks who are disabled, to have to drive miles and miles, in some cases more than a 100 miles round trip to drop off their ballot, it’s unsafe, it’s dangerous, and it’s certainly prejudicial.”