The eight Republican justices of the Texas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the clerk of the state’s most populous county cannot send out applications for mail-in ballots to all 2.4 million registered voters.
The court ruled that Chris Hollins, the Democratic clerk of Harris County, had overstepped his legal authority by seeking to send applications to all registered voters, even if they were not eligible to vote by mail under state law.
Texas law only allows people to vote by mail if they are aged over 65, if they will be absent on Election Day, if they have a disability, if they are in jail, or if they are crime victims with confidential addresses.
Hollins had sent out applications to voters aged over 65 in Harris County, which covers the city of Houston and is considered an important Democratic stronghold, but had been trying to send them to all voters — an estimated 1.7 million more applications — in case they too were eligible.
Two lower courts had ruled he could do so, but the highest court in Texas disagreed.
“Mass-mailing unsolicited ballot applications to voters ineligible to vote by mail cannot be said to be necessary or indispensable to the conduct of early voting,” the court ruled.