TEXAS -- As the legal battle over who can vote by mail in Texas continues, some elections officials say they're seeing a surge in requests for absentee ballots during the pandemic.

What You Need To Know


  • Elections officials see surge in people requesting absentee ballots

  • Most requests coming from people over the age of 65

  • Texas Supreme Court ruling led to confusion over ballot eligibility

“Normally absentee ballots are less than 10 percent, sometimes even less than 5 percent, and what we're seeing now, though, is a huge increase in people asking for ballot by mail,” Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said. “We would have thought that one thousand ballots received by mail for a runoff election would have been pretty normal. We have over 17,000 in house right now.”

DeBeauvoir said most are requests from people over the age of 65.

In order to qualify for a mail-in ballot, a voter must be 65 or older, disabled, out of the county on Election Day, or in jail but not convicted.

PREVIOIUS: Battle Over Mail-In Voting Amid COVID-19 Heats Up in Texas, Across Nation

But following a Texas Supreme Court ruling this week, confusion has spread over who is actually eligible. That's because while the court decided the pandemic is no reason to expand voting by mail, justices also said election officials don't have to check voter claims of disability.

DeBeauvoir says it’s a matter of checking a box and voters don't have to go into detail about what that disability might be.

"If the voter swears to it, it's the voter's prerogative and the voter's right and there isn't any way for us to reject it on the basis of disability," she said.  

But that could leave a voter who requests a ballot on the basis of the pandemic being a disability open to charges of voting fraud.

A separate lawsuit is playing out in federal court over whether vote-by-mail should be expanded to all voters.

Click the video link above to watch our full interview with DeBeauvoir.