GOP states have made it harder to vote. The changes could swing tight races

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When voters in Tarrant County, part of a key swing district in Texas, prepare to cast ballots for the midterms, they’ll encounter a whole new set of rules.

Those allowed to send mail-in ballots will now need to provide a Social Security or state ID number. And in-person voters will find that nearly 100 polling places have been shuttered – including all sites in one zip code that’s mostly Black and Latino.

Those kind of changes aren’t unique to Texas.

Republican lawmakers and officials around the country have taken steps at the state and local level to make it harder to vote this November, from enacting stricter registration requirements to adding ID restrictions to dramatically reducing early voting sites, polling places and ballot drop-boxes.

These changes, pushed through state Capitols and county boards of election, have not received the same attention as President Donald Trump’s dramatic attempts to curb mail voting and assert control over voting rolls, but they could have just as significant an impact on turnout in key races to control Congress.

The new restrictions, all passed since the last midterm election in 2022, could affect highly competitive Senate races in states including Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas, as well as toss-up House races, as Democrats seek three seats to retake the House and four to win the Senate.

“Many states are emulating the president’s agenda at the state level,” in ways that affect “whether eligible voters have a clear accessible path to cast a ballot,” said Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters. “In 17 years of working on voting rights, I have never seen such a widespread and coordinated effort to restrict access to the ballot.”

Voters in at least 22 states face new hurdles in casting their ballots compared with the 2024 election, according to a recent Brennan Center report. These new restrictions come on top of at least 78 restrictive laws passed by 30 states between 2020 and 2024.

Many GOP state and local officials have argued that the changes are needed to help make elections more secure, often echoing Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims that voting fraud runs rampant.

Speaking in August at the Republican midterm convention, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his state had adopted “the toughest voter ID law in the United States of America,” and that “we made clear that in elections in Texas, you have to be a United States citizen to vote.”

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However, there’s no evidence non-citizens have voted in Texas or any other states in significant numbers. Election experts say the new restrictions could depress turnout by making it harder for first-time voters to register and for those without driver’s licenses – such as some seniors and disabled voters – to cast ballots.

The changes in some locales are being made over significant protests from residents – including in Tarrant County, where many of those in a long line of speakers at a recent meeting pleaded with commissioners not to cut polling sites.

As protesters massed outside on September 1, the GOP-controlled county commissioners court voted 3-2 along party lines to reduce polling sites by nearly 30 percent – a change that County Judge Tim O’Hare said was needed to save money.

Opponents, though, said the cuts will make it harder to vote for groups seen as likely to back Democrats in the highly competitive county.

“Jane and Jim Crow are very much alive in Texas today,” said Brianna Brown, Executive Director of the Texas Organizing Project, which works to protect minority voting rights. “In Texas,” she said, “the demographics of young people and black and brown people are increasing, so the GOP is looking at ways to shrink participation.” She noted that Black and Hispanic voters make up a majority of the Texas population.

Similar dynamics are playing out across the country.

In Ohio, which features a tight Senate race between GOP Sen. Jon Husted and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Democrat, as well as numerous key House races, Buckeye voters will confront one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws for the first time in a midterm.

That law, passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2023, requires a photo ID to vote, meaning Ohioans can no longer use digital IDs, paychecks or other documents as identification, or to prove residency.

For new voters, it similarly limits the kind of documents they can use to register. The law also shortened the deadlines for voters to request absentee ballots, and to fix any errors on their ballots; and it eliminated early voting the Monday before Election Day.

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Ohio voters will also have fewer places to drop off ballots. The law limits each county to one drop box, open only during business hours, and says only voters with a documented disability who can’t physically enter a polling place can use curbside voting. It also made it a crime for anyone other than an immediate family member to drop off a ballot for a disabled voter, with some exceptions.

GOP officials said the law would protect the security of elections in the state.

“Elections integrity is a significant concern to Americans on both sides of the aisle across the country,” said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, at the time it passed.

The ID restrictions in large part target non-citizen voters, but there’s little evidence such voters exist in large numbers. In a 2024 review of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office found 137 non-citizens wrongly registered to vote through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. There was no indication any of them had voted.

Last year, the legislature also adopted a law that requires absentee ballots to arrive before polls close on Election Day. Previously, ballots could arrive later, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

On Sept. 29, a federal appeals court reinstated a provision that requires proof of US citizenship from anyone trying to register to vote through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

The law could also affect many college students who have out-of-state driver’s licenses, which are no longer acceptable ID in Ohio to register or vote.

“Students are often first-time voters. The law says if they are residents on a college campus, they can use that address to register to vote. In Ohio, you have to show a utility bill,” as one option to prove where you live, said Rebekah Caruthers, president of Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting-rights groups based in Washington, DC. “But if you live on campus, you don’t get utility bills.”

Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said that voters who don’t have driver’s licenses must use provisional ballots. As a result, she said, Ohio has some of the highest provisional ballot counts in the country this year.

Critics say the drop box limitations particularly hurt voters in large urban areas – a demographic fact that will impact Black voters in particular in major Ohio cities.

“Think about Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is, to say more than a million people should have only one place to drop off their ballot. That is what you do when you want to make it harder for people to vote,” said Caruthers.

In North Carolina, Democrats hope to flip a Senate seat with two-term former Gov. Roy Cooper polling strongly against Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chair.

Numerous House seats also could change parties, including in a race between Republican state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom and Democrat Jamie Ager. Both are seeking to replace Rep. Chuck Edwards, who dropped out of Congress after an ethics panel found evidence he repeatedly made unwanted advances toward two female staffers.

As CNN recently reported , state and local GOP leaders have worked to significantly restrict voting in the state – including by sharply cutting back on Sunday voting and imposing new restrictions on how mail-in ballots are processed.

The GOP-controlled legislature also transferred authority in 2024 over the state board of elections from the governor, a Democrat, to the state auditor, a Republican, who could then appoint Republicans to controlling positions on the state board and every county board of elections.

This year, those county elections boards voted not to have early-voting polling places near or on a variety of college campuses, including at North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black college or university, and UNC-Greensboro, among others.

Francis De Luca, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said in January that he opposed voting sites on university campuses because they had limited parking.

Students have pushed back hard against the changes, including in Guilford County, home to North Carolina A&T and UNC-Greensboro, to no avail.

“Students have been attending meetings at the Guildford County Board of Elections for months. Both have significant on-campus populations and are close to areas with a significant number of residents who don’t have access to a vehicle,” said Tyler Daye, program manager for Common Cause North Carolina.

At North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, the Wake County Board of Elections voted along party lines to move the early voting site this year from the Talley Student Union, at the center of campus, to a building a mile away and across a busy boulevard.

Boards also eliminated Sunday early voting in 23 counties. Sunday voting historically is important to Black churches that organize members to vote after services. De Luca, the state election board chairman, said that he opposed voting on Sunday because, “it’s the Lord’s Day.”

In Iowa, two recent polls of likely voters show Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek, a state house representative and two-time Paralympic gold medalist, running neck-and-neck with three - term GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson. There are also three competitive House races in the state.

In 2025, Iowa became among the earliest states to agree to use the federal SAVE citizenship-verification database, which has misidentified eligible voters as non-citizens.

In May, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law a bill that changed Iowa’s “attestation” law, which allowed a fellow voter from the district to vouch for the eligibility of someone who shows up to vote without a permitted ID. Now, those voters must use a provisional ballot and return by the Monday after Election Day with a valid ID to have their vote counted.

State Rep. Adam Zabner, a Democrat from Iowa City, told CNN, “I have concerns about the Republican agenda on voting and on this bill in particular.”

He said that “most people who take advantage of this system are older Iowans who no longer drive, don’t have driver’s licenses, and come in with family members who attest for them.” He noted that, under the old law, anyone falsely attesting to someone’s identity would have been criminally liable.

Kansas, which Trump won with 57% of the vote in 2024, hasn’t elected a Democrat to the US Senate since 1932. But now the race between incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor, is neck and neck.

This year, term-limited Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed several bills passed by the GOP-controlled legislature that would have enacted voting restrictions.

But lawmakers overrode her veto to enact the SAVE Kansas Act, which expands methods for purging voter rolls, restricts third-party efforts to register voters, and orders state agencies to share, with the Kansas Secretary of State, data on non-citizens receiving state benefits.

Lawmakers also overrode Kelly’s veto of a new state law that eliminated the three-day grace period for mail-in ballots to arrive at election offices. The new law would require mail-in ballots to arrive at election offices by 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

But in July, the Kansas Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that blocks that law from taking effect while a lawsuit against it is being litigated.

In Texas, recent polls show no clear leader in the Senate race between Democrat James Talarico, a state representative, and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defeated Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary, marking a comeback after being impeached by the Texas House but acquitted by the Senate in 2023.

A key battleground in that race is Tarrant County, the state’s third most populous county, which President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020 but Trump flipped back in 2024.

In September, Republican Tarrant County commissioners voted to cut early voting locations to 47 from 50 in the last midterm, and election day voting locations to 224 from 316. They also denied requested polling locations on five campuses. There also will be no polling places at all within the 76103 zip code, according to a lawsuit seeking to restore polling places. In that zip code, 76% of the population is Black or Hispanic, according to census data.

O’Hare, a Republican and the county’s chief political officer, said in a press release before the meeting, responding to criticism that the changes would make it harder for students and minority voters to get to the polls, that “no Tarrant County voter should ever feel they don’t have enough time to vote,” and that “this is a sensible plan designed to ensure that.”

On Oct. 2, a Fort Worth City Council member filed suit in state district court seeking to reinstate the 92 voting sites cut in September.

“What they have done is systematically gone through and made it harder for people of color, people in lower economic areas and people in Democratic areas to vote,” said Deborah Peoples, who said she filed the suit as a private citizen, not a city council member. “This was something we could not sit idly by and not speak up about.”

O’Hare’s campaign adviser Nick Maddux dismissed the suit as intended to benefit Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, who is running against O’Hare. “Tarrant County voters will not be fooled by these shenanigans,” Maddux said in a statement.

A judge this week denied the request to reinstate the sites .

Some other changes across Texas this year also remain in flux due to court challenges. In August, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mail-in and assisted voting restrictions will apply statewide this November.

Texas doesn’t allow universal vote-by-mail, but voters over 65 and those with certain disabilities, among others, can do so. They’ll now have to provide a Social Security or identification number matching state records for their mail-in ballot to be accepted; and anyone helping a disabled voter will have to disclose their relationship to the voter, sign an oath they didn’t coerce the voter, and disclose whether they received compensation.

Meanwhile, as first reported by Votebeat , Texas Department of Public Safety recently flooded numerous county registrars across the state with backlogged voter registration applications after discovering it had failed to process at least 500,000 applications submitted through its online driver’s license portal, some up to a year earlier.

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said that counties across the state have been working overtime since mid-September to clear up the backlog. He said that “from what we’re hearing, all the backlog has been updated and all the voters should show on the list of registered voters” by the time early voting begins on Oct. 19.

Across the country, many of the new laws affecting voters this fall “are aimed at solving a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, senior director of voting rights and elections programs at the Brennan Center.

“Disenfranchisement – the denial of a person’s constitutional right to vote – is a problem whether or not it swings the outcome of an election,” he said. “It can also have consequences beyond the election itself, shaping whose interests elected officials feel compelled to represent and respond to.”

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德克萨斯州关键摇摆选区塔兰特县的选民在准备参加中期选举投票时，将会遇到一套全新的规则。

获准邮寄选票的选民现在需要提供社会安全号码或州身份证号码。而现场投票的选民会发现，近100个投票站已经关闭——其中包括一个以黑人和拉丁裔为主的邮政编码区域内的所有投票站。

这类变化并非德克萨斯州独有。

全国各地的共和党议员和官员已在州和地方层面采取措施，使今年 11 月的投票更加困难，包括制定更严格的登记要求、增加身份限制、大幅减少提前投票点、投票站和选票投放箱。

这些由州议会和县选举委员会推动的变革，虽然没有像唐纳德·特朗普总统大幅限制邮寄投票和控制选民名册那样引起关注，但它们对控制国会的关键选举的投票率可能产生同样重大的影响。

这些新限制措施都是自 2022 年上次中期选举以来通过的，可能会影响爱荷华州、俄亥俄州、北卡罗来纳州和德克萨斯州等竞争激烈的参议院选举，以及势均力敌的众议院选举，因为民主党人正寻求赢得三个席位以重新夺回众议院的控制权，以及四个席位以赢得参议院的控制权。

“许多州都在州一级效仿总统的政策”，这影响到“符合资格的选民是否能够清晰便捷地投票”，妇女选民联盟首席执行官塞琳娜·斯图尔特表示。“在我从事投票权工作的17年里，我从未见过如此广泛且协调一致的限制投票权的行动。”

根据布伦南中心最近的一份报告，与2024年大选相比，至少有22个州的选民在投票时面临新的障碍。这些新限制是在2020年至2024年间30个州通过的至少78项限制性法律的基础上增加的。

许多共和党州和地方官员辩称，这些改变是必要的，有助于使选举更加安全，他们经常附和特朗普一再被驳斥的说法，即选举舞弊猖獗。

德克萨斯州州长格雷格·阿博特在8月份的共和党中期选举大会上表示，他的州已经通过了“美国最严格的选民身份法”，并且“我们明确表示，在德克萨斯州的选举中，你必须是美国公民才能投票”。

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然而，没有证据表明非公民在德克萨斯州或其他任何州大量投票。选举专家表示，新的限制措施可能会降低投票率，因为这将使首次投票者更难注册，并使没有驾照的人（例如一些老年人和残疾选民）更难投票。

一些地区的改革措施遭到了居民的强烈抗议——包括塔兰特县，在最近的一次会议上，许多发言者恳求委员们不要削减投票站。

9 月 1 日，抗议者聚集在外面，共和党控制的县委员法院以 3 比 2 的党派投票结果，决定将投票站减少近 30%——县法官蒂姆·奥黑尔表示，这一改变是为了节省资金。

不过，反对者表示，这些削减措施将使选民更难投票给那些被认为可能支持民主党的团体，尤其是在这个竞争激烈的县。

“简·克劳法和吉姆·克劳法在今天的德克萨斯州仍然根深蒂固，”致力于保护少数族裔投票权的德克萨斯州组织项目执行主任布里安娜·布朗说道。“在德克萨斯州，”她表示，“年轻人以及黑人和棕色人种的人口比例正在上升，因此共和党正在寻找各种方法来削弱他们的投票率。”她指出，黑人和西班牙裔选民占德克萨斯州人口的大多数。

类似的动态正在全国各地上演。

在俄亥俄州，共和党参议员乔恩·赫斯特德和民主党前参议员谢罗德·布朗之间的参议院席位之争十分激烈，此外还有许多重要的众议院席位之争。俄亥俄州的选民将在中期选举中首次面临美国最严格的选民身份法之一。

该法律由共和党控制的立法机构于 2023 年通过，规定投票时必须出示带照片的身份证件，这意味着俄亥俄州居民不能再使用数字身份证、工资单或其他文件作为身份证明或居住证明。

对于新选民而言，该法案同样限制了他们可用于注册的文件类型。此外，该法案还缩短了选民申请缺席选票和更正选票错误的截止日期；并取消了选举日前周一的提前投票。

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俄亥俄州选民的选票投递点也将减少。该法律规定每个县只能设置一个选票投递箱，且仅在工作时间内开放。此外，只有持有残疾证明且无法进入投票站的选民才能使用路边投票服务。该法律还规定，除直系亲属外，任何人替残疾选民投递选票均属违法行为，但也有一些例外情况。

共和党官员表示，该法律将保护该州的选举安全。

“选举公正性是全美两党人士都非常关心的问题，”俄亥俄州州长、共和党人迈克·德瓦恩在法案通过时表示。

这些身份限制措施主要针对非公民选民，但几乎没有证据表明这类选民数量众多。俄亥俄州州务卿办公室在2024年对该州820万登记选民进行审查时发现，有137名非公民通过车辆管理局错误地登记为选民。没有任何迹象表明他们中有人投过票。

去年，州议会还通过了一项法律，要求缺席选票必须在选举日投票结束前送达。此前，只要邮戳日期为选举日当天，选票可以晚些送达。

9 月 29 日，联邦上诉法院恢复了一项规定，该规定要求任何试图通过机动车辆管理局登记投票的人都必须提供美国公民身份证明。

该法律也可能影响许多持有外州驾照的大学生，因为外州驾照在俄亥俄州不再被接受为登记或投票的身份证件。

“学生通常是第一次投票。法律规定，如果他们住在大学校园内，就可以用校园地址登记投票。在俄亥俄州，你需要出示水电费账单，”华盛顿特区无党派投票权组织“公平选举中心”主席丽贝卡·卡鲁瑟斯说，“这是证明居住地址的一种方式。但如果你住在校园里，就不会收到水电费账单。”

俄亥俄州妇女选民联盟执行主任珍·米勒表示，没有驾照的选民必须使用临时选票。因此，她说，俄亥俄州今年的临时选票数量位居全国前列。

批评人士表示，投票箱的限制对大城市地区的选民造成了特别大的伤害——这一人口统计事实将尤其影响俄亥俄州主要城市的黑人选民。

“想想克利夫兰所在的库亚霍加县，如果说一百多万人只能在一个地方投递选票，那岂不是自找麻烦吗？”卡鲁瑟斯说道。

在北卡罗来纳州，民主党人希望赢得一个参议院席位，两届前州长罗伊·库珀的民调支持率远高于前共和党全国委员会主席迈克尔·沃特利。

众议院多个席位也可能易手，其中包括共和党州众议员詹妮弗·巴尔科姆和民主党候选人杰米·阿格之间的竞选。两人都希望接替查克·爱德华兹的席位，爱德华兹此前因被道德委员会发现多次对两名女性工作人员进行性骚扰而退出国会。

正如 CNN 最近报道的那样，州和地方共和党领导人一直致力于大幅限制该州的投票——包括大幅减少周日投票，以及对邮寄选票的处理方式施加新的限制。

2024 年，共和党控制的立法机构还将州选举委员会的权力从民主党籍州长移交给共和党籍州审计长，后者可以任命共和党人担任州选举委员会和各县选举委员会的领导职位。

今年，这些县选举委员会投票决定不在包括北卡罗来纳州立农业技术大学（美国最大的历史悠久的黑人学院或大学）和北卡罗来纳大学格林斯伯勒分校在内的多个大学校园附近或校园内设立提前投票站。

州选举委员会主席弗朗西斯·德·卢卡 (Francis De Luca) 在 1 月份表示，他反对在大学校园设立投票站，因为大学校园停车位有限。

学生们对这些变革进行了强烈的抵制，包括北卡罗来纳州农业技术大学和北卡罗来纳大学格林斯伯勒分校所在的吉尔福德县，但都无济于事。

“几个月来，学生们一直在参加吉尔福德县选举委员会的会议。这两个机构都有大量的校园学生，而且都靠近有很多没有车的居民的地区，”北卡罗来纳州公共事业联盟的项目经理泰勒·戴伊说。

在北卡罗来纳州立大学（位于罗利市），韦克县选举委员会按照党派路线投票决定，今年将提前投票地点从校园中心的塔利学生中心移至一英里外、穿过一条繁忙大道的一栋建筑物内。

选举委员会还在23个县取消了周日提前投票。历史上，周日投票对黑人教堂来说非常重要，这些教堂会组织教友在礼拜结束后投票。州选举委员会主席德卢卡表示，他反对周日投票，因为“那是主日”。

在爱荷华州，最近两项针对可能投票选民的民调显示，民主党参议员候选人、州众议员、两届残奥会金牌得主乔什·图雷克与连任三届的共和党众议员阿什利·欣森的支持率不相上下。该州还有三场竞争激烈的众议院席位争夺战。

2025 年，爱荷华州成为最早同意使用联邦 SAVE 公民身份验证数据库的州之一，该数据库曾将符合资格的选民错误地识别为非公民。

今年五月，共和党州长金·雷诺兹签署了一项法案，修改了爱荷华州的“身份证明”法。该法此前允许选区内的其他选民为未携带有效身份证件的选民担保其投票资格。如今，这些选民必须使用临时选票，并在选举日后的星期一之前携带有效身份证件返回，其选票才能被计入。

来自爱荷华市的民主党州众议员亚当·扎布纳告诉 CNN：“我对共和党在投票问题上的议程，尤其是对这项法案的议程感到担忧。”

他说：“利用这套系统的大多数人是爱荷华州的老年人，他们不再开车，也没有驾照，只能由家人来为他们作证。” 他指出，根据旧法律，任何伪造他人身份的人都将承担刑事责任。

堪萨斯州在2024年被特朗普以57%的得票率拿下，自1932年以来就再也没有选出过民主党参议员。但现在，现任共和党参议员罗杰·马歇尔和民主党候选人、联合卫理公会牧师亚当·汉密尔顿之间的竞争异常激烈。

今年，任期届满的民主党籍州长劳拉·凯利否决了共和党控制的立法机构通过的几项旨在限制投票权的法案。

但立法者推翻了她的否决，通过了《拯救堪萨斯法案》，该法案扩大了清理选民名册的方法，限制了第三方登记选民的努力，并命令州政府机构与堪萨斯州州务卿共享有关领取州福利的非公民的数据。

立法者们还推翻了凯利州长对一项新州法律的否决。该法律取消了邮寄选票送​​达选举办公室的三天宽限期。新法律规定，邮寄选票必须在选举日晚上7点前送达选举办公室才能被计入。

但今年 7 月，堪萨斯州最高法院维持了下级法院的一项裁决，该裁决阻止了该法律生效，因为针对该法律的诉讼仍在审理中。

在德克萨斯州，最近的民意调查显示，民主党州众议员詹姆斯·塔拉里科和州检察长肯·帕克斯顿在参议院竞选中没有明显的领先者。帕克斯顿在共和党初选中击败了参议员约翰·科宁，这标志着他在2023年被德克萨斯州众议院弹劾但被参议院宣告无罪后卷土重来。

这场竞选的关键战场是塔兰特县，该县是该州人口第三多的县，乔·拜登总统在 2020 年以微弱优势赢得了该县，但特朗普在 2024 年又将其翻盘。

9月，塔兰特县共和党委员投票决定将提前投票点从上次中期选举的50个削减至47个，并将选举日投票点从316个削减至224个。他们还拒绝了在五个校园内设立投票站的请求。根据一项旨在恢复投票站的诉讼，邮编为76103的地区将完全没有投票站。人口普查数据显示，该地区76%的人口为黑人或西班牙裔。

共和党人、该县首席政治官员奥黑尔在会议前的一份新闻稿中回应了批评，称这些改变将使学生和少数族裔选民更难去投票站，“塔兰特县的任何选民都不应该觉得他们没有足够的时间去投票”，并且“这是一个旨在确保这一点的合理计划”。

10 月 2 日，沃斯堡市议会一名成员向州地方法院提起诉讼，要求恢复 9 月份被取消的 92 个投票站。

“他们采取的行动是系统性的，旨在让有色人种、低收入地区居民和民主党选区的选民更难投票，”黛博拉·皮普尔斯说道。她表示，自己是以普通公民的身份提起诉讼，而非市议员。“我们不能对此袖手旁观，必须发声。”

奥黑尔的竞选顾问尼克·马杜克斯驳斥了这起诉讼，称其目的是为了让与奥黑尔竞选的塔兰特县专员艾丽莎·西蒙斯受益。“塔兰特县的选民不会被这些伎俩蒙蔽，”马杜克斯在一份声明中说。

本周，一名法官驳回了恢复这些网站的请求。

今年德克萨斯州的其他一些变化也因法律挑战而悬而未决。8月，第五巡回上诉法院裁定，邮寄投票和辅助投票的限制措施将在今年11月的全州范围内实施。

德克萨斯州不允许全民邮寄投票，但65岁以上的选民和某些残疾人士等可以这样做。他们现在必须提供与州记录相符的社会保障号码或身份证号码，其邮寄选票才能被接受；任何帮助残疾选民的人都必须披露其与选民的关系，签署一份声明，保证没有胁迫选民，并披露是否获得了报酬。

与此同时，据 Votebeat 最先报道，德克萨斯州公共安全部最近向全州许多县的选民登记员发放了大量积压的选民登记申请，此前该部门发现其在线驾驶执照门户网站至少有 50 万份申请未能处理，其中一些申请甚至可以追溯到一年前。

德克萨斯州县选举官员协会执行主任克里斯·麦金表示，自9月中旬以来，全州各县一直在加班加点地清理积压的选民登记信息。他说，“据我们了解，所有积压的信息都已更新完毕，所有选民的信息都应该在10月19日提前投票开始前出现在选民登记名单上。”

布伦南中心投票权和选举项目高级主管肖恩·莫拉莱斯-多伊尔表示，今年秋季影响选民的许多新法律“旨在解决一个并不存在的问题”。

他说：“剥夺选举权——即剥夺公民的宪法投票权——无论是否影响选举结果，都是一个问题。它还会产生选举之外的影响，影响当选官员认为他们有义务代表和回应哪些群体的利益。”