VOTING

Early Voting won the 2022 Preakness Stakes, outracing Epicenter and Creative Minister. Early Voting came into the race as one of the favorites to win.

Republicans dismantled the only Galveston County commissioners precinct in which voters of color held political clout. It’s a major blow for Black and Hispanic voters who had been building political momentum.

Comal County’s main elections office was packed with voters during Tuesday’s second day of early voting for the May 24 party primary runoff elections.

Mason said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote when she cast a provisional ballot in 2016, but she was sentenced to five years in prison. Now, the Court of Criminal Appeals says an appellate court that affirmed her conviction must look again at the evidence of Mason’s intent.

When it comes to voting these days, it’s a bit of a hot topic.

The polls are officially closed for early voting in the May 7 election.

The polls are officially closed for early voting in the May 7 election.

The propositions target school district taxes.

Early voting ended Friday. Mail-in ballots must be returned by May 24.

Texans who don’t vote in primaries and primary runoffs are missing a chance to choose who goes to Congress and the Texas Legislature. Thanks to the political maps drawn by lawmakers last year, only a handful of those contests will be competitive in November.

Figures released by the Texas secretary of state show that more than 24,000 Texas voters had their ballots rejected in the March primary. The rejection rate is a significant increase over previous elections.

Powell, a Democrat, had won Senate District 10 by winning over a coalition of diverse voters in Tarrant County. The GOP redrew the district to branch out to counties to the south and west that made it more rural and more white.

As Texas defends against accusations that its new political maps are discriminatory, it’s laying the groundwork to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out longstanding Voting Rights Act protections.

A group of students at Prairie View A&M University sued the county, claiming it set up an election schedule in 2018 that offered students — most of them Black — fewer opportunities to vote early than the county’s white residents.

Nearly 23,000 Texans voted in this month’s party primaries and saw their mail ballots rejected by election officials, evidently an aftershock from new state laws that were supposed to make voting easier and more secure.

In just 16 of the state’s largest counties, more than 18,000 mail-in ballots were rejected, most for failing to meet the new law’s ID requirements. A full statewide tally isn’t yet available.

At least 1,929 Bexar County voters who cast a ballot in the Mar. 1 primary did not have their vote counted, largely due to a requirement under a new, controversial voting law.

Republicans are suing and Democrats want a full review after Harris County missed deadlines to have its votes tallied and failed to count 10,000 ballots in its initial returns.

In the Texas House, the biggest intraparty attack on Republican leadership came from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, led by former state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford. Backed by hard-right donors like Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, West Texas oil tycoons, the group spent at least $5.2 million from January onward.

How many voters were effectively disenfranchised by new ID requirements for mail-in voting won’t be known for another week. Voters can still try to correct defective ballots.

In some voting locations where a party’s appointed polling judge didn’t show up, election officials allowed the other party’s judge to operate both parties’ voting machines in an effort to keep the polling place running.

Most Texas voters skip the primary elections, leaving many of the decisions about who serves in office to a relatively small group of Texas — voters who have more clout as a result.

Cameron County voters are taking advantage of early voting, and Elections Administrator Remi Garza expects the number of people voting early to increase as election day nears.

Patrick’s mass mailing urging voters to apply for mail-in ballots included return envelopes addressed to the Texas secretary of state’s office. The applications are supposed to be sent to local offices, but Patrick’s campaign says voters don’t trust election officials in Democratic counties.

Disability rights advocates say the state has not provided enough guidance about the type of help people with disabilities can and cannot receive under new voting laws passed last year.

With 1,181,000 Bexar County residents registered to vote this year, you may want to be strategic about where you go to cast your ballot.

Texas has a history of a dismal turnout rate in primary elections. This year’s turnout was higher than the last six midterm primaries. Still, less than 1 in 5 registered voters participated.

The challenged provision makes it a state jail felony for election officials to “solicit the submission” of an application to vote by mail if the voter did not request it.

Local elections officials say an unexpectedly large number of ballots for the March primary are being initially rejected for lacking newly required ID information.

As winter weather moved in this week, the state’s elected leaders worked to regain Texans’ confidence in the electric grid that failed last year. A few days earlier, some of those same leaders were undermining confidence in something else they oversee: elections.

With less than five weeks left in the primary election season, there is no shortage of political issues to debate. But most of the political conversation isn’t about the election.

With less than a month left to vote by mail in the March primary election, hundreds of applications for mail-in ballots are being rejected as both Texas voters and local election officials decipher new ID requirements enacted by Republican lawmakers.

We should agree that voting is sacred right

Business people running elections might try to remove obstacles to make everything smooth and secure for voters. But a kink in the supply chain for voter registration forms in Texas highlights a venerable distinction: Government doesn't run like a business.

Some of the same voting debates underway when Martin Luther King Jr. was alive are still being debated right now in Texas and in Washington, D.C.

The last day to register to vote was Jan. 31. The last day to apply for a ballot by mail is Feb. 18. Early voting runs from Feb. 14-25.

In this week’s episode, Matthew speaks with Jolie and Alexa about a potentially influential court case in Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to arrest migrants at the border and a high rejection rate among applicants seeking to vote by mail.

Here’s something Democrats and Republicans have in common: When lawmakers are deadlocked, leaders turn to the rulebooks, searching for angles and rule changes that would turn things their way.

Texas Republicans last year enacted new identification requirements for voting by mail as part of sweeping legislation that further restricted the state’s voting process and narrowed local control of elections.

Challenges to new Texas laws on voting, political districts and abortion are all pending in court, as is the state’s challenge to federal vaccine mandates. But until the courts rule, those laws remain in place — and they provide political fodder for the incumbents who support them.

The new year comes with a new election — and with familiar challenges to the way Texans vote and have their votes counted.

Voting is American citizens’ sacred duty

An initial review of four counties’ election results — launched after pressure from former President Donald Trump and touted by GOP leaders — showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts.

The secretary of state’s office says it is following the legal settlement agreement it entered in 2019 after botching its first review effort. But scores of citizens are still being marked for citizenship verification — and possible removal from the rolls.

There were 1,330 ballots cast during early voting that ended Tuesday for the McAllen District 1 commissioner special runoff election between attorney Javier Villalobos and businessman Timothy Wilkins. Early voting this time saw 500 more votes cast than during the early voting period in January’s three-person special election. During the runoff election, Wilkins spent $15,613 compared to Villalobos’ $4,015, according to eight-day campaign finance report filings with the city secretary’s office. The early voting period partially overlapped with the Texas primary election early voting period. District 1 voters can cast ballots Saturday, election day, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Gonzalez Elementary School.

Dallas-area Latinos hoped their growing numbers would finally translate into political clout this year through the creation of a new congressional district anchored by their communities. Instead, their neighborhoods were splintered between numerous white-majority districts.

They didn't make a majority of Texas voters happy on a single issue, but the Republican majority in the Legislature made most of their own voters happy — and then drew maps that minimize political threats to them in the November general election.

Republican incumbents enter their reelection campaigns well ahead of their Republican challengers and with most voters unacquainted with the Democratic challengers in the field, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

The elderly, voters with disabilities and voters with limited English proficiency risk disenfranchisement under sweeping legislation Texas Republicans pushed through earlier this year, the justice department argues in its legal challenge to Senate Bill 1.

In a final push to secure federal voting rights legislation this year, congressional Democrats failed to secure the necessary votes to avoid a GOP filibuster on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

The Mexican American Legislative Caucus is arguing that the new state House map violates the Texas Constitution. The lawsuit follows two legal challenges to the state’s new maps previously filed in federal court.

Unofficial results show that Texas voters approved eight amendments to the state Constitution.

After conservative complaints about the national results in the 2020 election, Texas Republicans have tried to anticipate everything that might play against them in 2022, right down to who’ll be at the helm.

The conservative Texas Republican leader who pledged bounties to those who prove fraud at the polls has paid a liberal poll watcher who reported illegal voting by a Pennsylvania registered Republican.

In their latest push to lift state-level voting restrictions, Senate Democrats failed to secure the 60 votes required to break a filibuster on the Freedom to Vote Act.

With partisan fervor, Republicans drew new maps for Congress and the Legislature that dilute the power of voters of color. Now the lawsuits begin, as groups that feel marginalized battle for representation in the halls of power.

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this week on the Freedom to Vote Act, which would supersede some of Texas’ new elections law.

The redistricting plans for the House, Senate and State Board of Education were approved Friday.

The GOP is losing its hold on suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth as they grow more diverse. Two new districts show how far the party is reaching to entrench rural, white electoral power.

The method, in which voters are asked to rank candidates, has gained traction as a way to more accurately reflect the will of the majority. But detractors warn there are potential downsides, too.

Ranked choice voting is expected to delay the results; former cop Eric Adams and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang led in Democratic polls.

Early voting is already underway.

Early voting kicked off Tuesday for the city of San Juan runoff elections.

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., said he will push the Democratic Party to elect the House leadership in 2022 by ranked-choice voting, and that he plans to make this reform central to his agenda going forward.

Early voting begins for Georgia Senate runoff elections Early voting began Monday in Georgia for the two runoff elections that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. Early voting ends on January 1, followed by Election Day on January 5. CBSN political reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns joins CBSN from Atlanta with the latest.

Bexar County's second day of early voting turned out more than 3,000 voters than on the first day. The Bexar County Elections Office reported that 36,892 voters showed up to the polls Wednesday compared to the 33,111 on Tuesday to kick off the early voting.

Heres a look at how voting by mail works in Texas and the ongoing legal fight. How do I qualify to vote by mail in Texas? According to Five Thirty Eight, 29 states allow any registered voter to request a ballot by mail, and five states conduct all elections via mail. A state appeals court upheld the district judges order, but the Texas Supreme Court then put it on hold. To apply for a mail-in ballot, voters must mail a completed application for ballot by mail to the early voting clerk in the county where they are registered.