The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday rejected, without comment, a bid by three Republican candidates and a GOP activist to toss out almost 127,000 votes cast from drive-thru lanes in the emerging Democratic stronghold of Harris County.
The votes, however, are not yet safe to count as part of the early voting tally Tuesday.
A federal judge will hold an emergency hearing Monday morning — less than 21 hours before polls open on Election Day — to hear arguments on a similar challenge filed by the same group of Republicans, who say that state law prohibits drive-thru voting, so every vote cast from cars during the early voting period should be tossed out as illegal.
At the same hearing, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen will weigh a request by Democratic organizations and the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, MJ Hegar, to join the case in defense of drive-thru voting — and the 126,911 votes cast that way.
The Democrats urged Hanen to reject the GOP lawsuit, filed two weeks after early voting had begun and four months after Harris County announced plans for drive-thru voting, arguing that the challenge was filed too late and that stepping in now would create mass confusion and disenfranchise voters whose ballots were legally cast. – READ MORE
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