WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to voting rules in Texas that automatically let senior citizens − but not younger people − vote by mail.
Mail-in balloting has become a partisan debate as Democrats champion it as a way to increase turnout and Republicans argue it increases the risk of voter fraud.
Documented cases of voter fraud, including those related to voting by mail, are rare. But while uncommon, fraud seems to occur more often with mailed-in votes than with in-person voting, according to the MIT Election Data & Science Lab.
Seven states – Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee – allow older voters to request an absentee ballot for any reason but let others do so only under certain circumstances.
The court on Monday declined to hear an appeal brought by three voters in Texas, just as it rejected a similar challenge in 2021 to Indiana’s voting rules. It also twice declined to hear earlier versions of the Texas suit brought by the Texas Democratic Party during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They wanted the court to overturn an appeals court’s ruling that Texas’ rules are allowed because making it easier for some people to vote doesn’t make it harder for others to do so. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said that the right to vote when the 26th Amendment was ratified did not include the right to vote by mail.