This is documented in the Texas Observer and again in the Dallas Morning News. The Dallas Morning News points out that Abbot ran a two year investigation using $1.5 million grant and netted only 26 cases, all against Democrats and all against Blacks or Hispanics.
The cases his office pursued largely have involved mail-in ballots. In 18 of the 26 cases, the voters were eligible, votes were properly cast and no vote was changed – but the people who collected the ballots for mailing were prosecuted.In short, Abbot's allegations of widespread voter fraud have been proven to be a lie and a fraud itself - a lie and fraud that is much larger than any identifiable problem of fraudulent voting. Yet Abbot is pushing hard for a voter picture ID to combat this "widespread (imaginary) voter fraud."
State law makes it a crime to carry someone else's filled-out ballot to the mailbox, unless the carrier puts his or her own name and address on the envelope.
Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a group that supports electing Democrats in Texas, said Mr. Abbott mostly has pursued "technical violations" against people who have assisted neighbors, often the elderly or disabled. He said the few ballots involved undercuts Mr. Abbott's claim that vote fraud is epidemic.
"Nobody is disputing that from time to time people in both parties, based on a desire to win, might cheat," Mr. Angle said. "But for these people to be prosecuted so aggressively is really just an exercise in intimidation. They are trying to send a message to a much larger community that voting is a risky business."
Yep. Because several individuals assisted elderly voters who were housebound by carrying their mail-in ballots to a nearby mail box, Gregg Abbot wants to also prevent elderly retired non-driving nuns from voting also.
One ignorant idiot left a comment on the Think Progress report stating that the nuns refused to vote provisionally in the incident. He stated "These nuns were NOT TURNED AWAY, they REFUSED TO VOTE with a provisional ballot! To imply anything else is just a patent lie!" (comment #41)
This comment is listed very high on Google. It implies that the nuns who were refused the right to vote could actually have voted a provisional ballot and had it count. That's wrong.
The provisional vote would not have counted. Had they voted provisionally, they had 10 days to acquire the required picture ID and present it or the provisional vote would be canceled. Assuming that they could somehow have physically reached a driver's license bureau and met the documentary requirements for an ID card (expensive and acquiring the documents can be very slow), it could not have been provided within the 10 day required period.
Here in Texas the provisional ballot has a series of blocks on it that explain why a regular ballot could not be offered. One of those blocks must be checked for the provisional ballot to be valid. But if the block that states "Did not present valid ID" is checked, then the form specifically states that their "provisional" vote will not be counted. There is no further investigation and the vote is trash-canned by the committee that evaluates provisional ballots. The system is designed to prevent the ill or elderly from voting.
This is nothing more than a way of preventing the elderly and the poor from voting. It is the ignorant idiot who is wrong.
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