VOTING

Texans will decide the fate of 14 constitutional amendments approved for the ballot by state lawmakers. Here’s a breakdown of each constitutional amendment and requirements to vote.

A new Texas law requiring more Election Day polling sites in several counties next year has officials worried they won’t be able to find enough voting locations or workers to staff them.

The Republican-passed Senate Bill 1 added restrictions to voting in Texas that plaintiffs say disproportionately affect voters of color

The ruling means the November elections in the state’s largest county will be overseen by two other county officials. Legislators targeted Harris County’s elections department after taking issue with the way the 2022 elections were run.

A federal judge blocks an 118-year-old state law that required minor political party candidates to collect more than 83,000 signatures on paper in order to appear on the ballot.

The bipartisan legislation was long sought by advocates for disabled voters, including some of the governor’s own allies.

Currently, more than 80% of Texas voters can vote anywhere in their home county, a model that originated in Lubbock County. If lawmakers approve new legislation, that would change.

The Texas Senate has passed similar legislation. But a key policy separates the two chambers.

The priority bill, backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, reverses a change the Legislature made two years ago during an omnibus voting bill that made illegal voting a misdemeanor.

A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said only a court order could force a redo of elections.

Some 50 Texas sheriffs and numerous elected officials have attended trainings on the unsupported notion that sheriffs can single-handedly overrule state and federal law. The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which offered state peace officers credit for the seminars, is now investigating.

Four Texas counties were evaluated in a 359-page audit released by Secretary of State John Scott on Monday, two weeks before he steps down as chief election official.

The League of United Latin American Citizens sued the city Monday, asking a federal court to halt its practice of electing five of its 16 council members through at-large elections.

Here are some examples of strange ways elections were decided.

Mike May, who lost to Houston state Rep. Jon Rosenthal by 6,000 votes, wants the Texas House to order a new election. State law allows such an appeal, but the House hasn’t approved one in more than 40 years.

Adam Hinojosa finished 659 votes behind Democrat Morgan LaMantia in a race that garnered 175,415 total votes.

A court ordered Harris County to keep its polls open late on Election Day, but Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the state Supreme Court to not allow ballots cast after normal deadline to count.

A Georgia appeals court ruling means that counties can offer early voting this coming Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

A judge has ruled that Georgia law allows counties to offer early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Scattered paper ballot shortages and late openings of polling places were among the glitches that prompted calls for scrutiny from statewide Republican officials.

Citing thousands of complaints received throughout the midterm cycle, voter advocacy groups want the Texas Legislature to bolster voter protection and education measures, and revisit recently passed laws that empowered partisan poll watchers.

In Texas, 45.7% of the 17.7 million registered voters cast ballots in the 2022 midterm election. That’s 7.3 percentage points lower than the state’s total turnout in 2018 but higher than in every other midterm election in the last 20 years.

Texas Tribune photographers spread out all over the state to document a momentous midterm election.

Results are still being finalized in key congressional and state legislature races across the country, but one thing that became clear overnight is that the 2022 midterm elections were not the red wave of Republican wins many pundits forecasted.

In case you’ve been living under a rock these last few weeks, today is election day!

Claims of misconduct during early voting were raised in a federal lawsuit filed Monday by the Beaumont chapter of the NAACP, accusing election workers of scrutinizing Black voters’ identities and shadowing them while at voting stations

Follow The Texas Tribune’s coverage of midterm election results for governor, attorney general, U.S. House and the Texas Legislature.

The Texas A&M on-campus early-voting location had the second-highest voter turnout in the county during the 2018 and 2020 presidential elections.

Republicans may be waiting to vote on Election Day after former President Donald Trump pushed voting in person on Nov. 8 at a rally in South Texas.

Much of the focus has shifted to the Senate, specifically a few select races that will decide control.

Sensitive touch screens aren’t always user friendly and make it easy for voters to accidentally select the wrong candidate. Voters should carefully review their ballots before submitting them.

Many Texas universities don’t have early-voting locations on campus. And state laws regarding voter ID and registration make it hard to turn out younger voters, advocates say.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8. Early voting ran from Monday, Oct. 24, to Friday, Nov. 4. The last day to apply to vote by mail was Friday, Oct. 28.

Attorney General Ken Paxton pursued charges against Rogers, who was on parole when he voted in the 2020 primary election. But a judge tossed the case after a higher court said Paxton can’t unilaterally prosecute election crimes.

Voters in five states are deciding whether to close loopholes that allowed convict labor as an exception to slavery.

One of the state’s fastest-growing demographics, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders often lack information in their languages that would make the political process more accessible.

The Texas Tribune spoke to Texans across the political spectrum and asked them to make their case for why voting matters this year. The deadline to register to vote was Oct. 11. Early voting runs from Oct. 24 to Nov. 4.

How do I find out if I’m registered to vote? How do I register to vote in the first place? Who is eligible to register to vote?

On this week’s episode, Matthew speaks with Alexa, Pooja and Rob about the difficult task facing election administrators ahead of the 2022 vote.

Watchdog groups fear the film will fuel chaos in the upcoming midterm elections and could be a pretext for more restrictive voting laws in the future.

The Brazos County commissioner who represents the precinct where the university is located cited low turnout as a partial reason for relocating the polling location.

Here’s an overview of where things stand in the Senate and House of Representatives with the election more than a month away.

The appellate court reversed a previous ruling that found that Texas violated federal law by refusing to release the list. The suit was brought by five civil rights groups that sought to hold Texas accountable if it disenfranchised naturalized citizens.

County commissioners decided Tuesday that A&M still won’t have an on-campus early-voting location for the 2022 elections, despite admitting it was a mistake to eliminate it for the first time in years.

The deadline to register to vote was Oct. 11. The last day to apply to vote by mail was Oct. 28. Early voting ran from Oct. 24 to Nov. 4.

Attorney General Ken Paxton accused Richard Molina of participating in “an organized illegal voting scheme,” when he announced the arrest in 2019.

Attorney general’s opinion invites lawsuits over long-established ballot security and sets up election officials for possible criminal charges.

The rejection rate of mail-in ballots in Texas went from less than 2% to more than 12% under SB 1

In this week’s episode, Matthew speaks with Abby about the week in Texas politics and Cassandra about financial practices of the conservative nonprofit True the Vote.

What do those terms mean and how have they become an issue for how elections are covered? An expert weighs in.

Voting: It’s one of the most American things we do every two years -- and along with it comes the peaceful transfer of power, democracy in action, and the voices of the people heard in the solemn right of civic duty.

Groups across the state of Virginia work all year long to get students registered to vote in high school and college -- the idea being, if these students start young, they’ll vote their entire lives.

Waiting for final results from Houston and Harris County has become an unwelcome Texas political ritual. The county’s sheer size is part of the problem, but so is party squabbling over counting procedures.

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.

Exercising your right to vote can be confusing or intimidating, regardless if you’re a first-time voter or a veteran. KPRC 2 News and KSAT, our San Antonio sister-station, worked to create a comprehensive resource to make sure every eligible Texan can vote and is counted.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.