‘What we’ve seen from the Left is a willingness to change any rule … if it prevents even the slightest friction for their ground game this November…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A Texas federal appeals court on Wednesday issued a temporary stay of a lower court’s ruling expanding mail-in voting in the state.
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted federal Judge Fred Biery’s attempt to expand the “disability” provision in the state’s vote-by-mail election code.
The rule would have allowed all registered voters “who lack immunity from COVID-19 and fear infection at polling places” to vote by mail, according to CNN.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had requested the temporary stay, which will become permanent if the 5th Circuit decides to take up Paxton’s appeal of Biery’s ruling.
Texas Democrats have been trying to expand the state’s mail-in voting system, using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to do so. But Paxton has argued that “the fear of the coronavirus” is not a good reason to open Texas’s elections to rampant vote fraud.
“The law is pretty clear. It doesn’t allow for people to get mail-in ballots for fear of coronavirus or anything else, fear of being hit by a car on the way to vote. We trust our voters to do the right thing,” Paxton told MSNBC on Wednesday.
Paxton also rejected accusations that the state government’s fight against mail-in voting is a form of voter suppression.
“The governor has just recently changed the dates for voting. Instead of 10 days of early voting, he’s given 20 days of early voting,” Paxton explained. “We surely want to make sure we have as safe of voting locations as we can, just like we have open grocery stores and restaurants.”
Mail-in voting is a highly problematic system that lends itself to rampant fraud, according to Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.
Democrats know this, he said, but they don’t care so long as they “get as many votes into the hands of voters as possible, regardless of whether those voters are real,” he explained.
“What we’ve seen from the Left is a willingness to change any rule or any law or any practice if it prevents even the slightest friction for their ground game this November, in terms of getting out to vote,” Snead said.