CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — 3News has been updating you on the ongoing legal battle over straight ticket voting in Texas. We've learned that a federal appeals court has put a temporary hold on a lower court ruling that reinstated the practice of "straight-ticket" voting. This leaves many wondering if that option will be available in the upcoming election or not.
Meantime early voting is set to start October 13, leaving election administrators little time to make major changes to voting procedures.
“So, right now the ballot as it is, it's been locked the programming of our election has been locked,” said Nueces County Clerk Kara Sands.
Sands tells 3News everything for the upcoming general election has been locked or put on hold to protect the integrity of the election. This as the result of the lawsuit demanding that straight parting voting be reinstated. The decision now in the courts, but the delay is already causing a back-log mail in ballots.
“So, what we're doing in the meantime, we are still processing them, we're still getting them in the kits we're still getting them ready to go and if they say hey these are good, we're ready to mail those out,” said Sands. “If they're not then everything else is put together and we'll have to print all new ballots and then we'll just have to replace them.”
Like every county in Texas, Nueces County's elections department has stopped printing mail paper ballots until they know what the courts will rule.
“The mail in ballots are just a reflection of exactly what is on the program equipment right so the ballot although its different when you vote in person, its page by page and its touch screen but it reflects exactly what’s on that ballot,” said Sands.
If new mail-in ballot have to be re-printed, Sand's says it could delay voters from getting them as they normally would. In fact, she says she gets calls every day from voters saying they haven't received their ballots and that is what's causing concern for local attorney David Bright.
Bright, represents several Nueces County residents who are suing sands for a mistake allegedly made during the primary election process. Bright says given the history of past elections he believes everything needs to be checked several times, five times if need be.
“Mistakes that the county clerk made where she sent out incorrect information to mail-in voters, about 15-hundred mail-in voters and the county clerk admits that this was done,” said Bright.
Bright says he believes the issue with the straight party ticket will be resolved, but his major concern is that nothing else comes up that'll discourage voters from casting their ballots.
“The way to assure that your vote it counted is to show up and vote in person during early voting. I think, that’s what I’m going to do,” said Bright.