Texas judge rules Republicans do not have standing to throw out drive-through ballots

A federal court judge in Texas has rejected a Republican-led effort to invalidate thousands of ballots cast in one of the largest counties in the US.

US District Judge Andrew Hanen, an appointee under Republican president George W Bush, ruled that GOP plaintiffs seeking to toss out nearly 127,000 ballots cast at drive-through sites in Harris County do not have standing to do so.

He said that he’s “not buying” the plaintiffs’ argument that the ballots are not secure, and dismissed arguments that casting ballots at drive-through sites approved by a bipartisan state legislature and secretary of states is illegal. 

“I also would not enter an injunction because I don't find it timely,” he said on Monday. “This has been happening at least since September … These are registered voters who gave their ID."

Pending an appeal to the federal 5th Circuit Court, Judge Hanen ordered election officials maintain records of votes cast at drive-through sites through Election Day.

But he also suggested voters who plan to cast ballots on Election Day do so in-person at the polls, not at curbside voting sites.

“If I were voting tomorrow, I would not vote through a drive-through to make sure my vote would be valid,” he said.

Chris Hollins, Harris County Clerk, confirmed to reporters that all 10 of its curbside voting sites will be open on 3 November.

Harris County, which includes the Houston area, is the most populous county in the state. It went for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 by roughly 160,000 votes.

On Sunday, the state’s Supreme Court rejected the challenge from three Republican candidates and a GOP activist in a similar suit.

Election analysts believe Texas has emerged as a potential battleground between Donald Trump and Joe Biden that could flip to a Democratic presidential win for the first time since 1976 when Jimmy Carter carried the state. There also are a number of critical local and statewide races on Texas ballots.

More than 9 million people in the state have already voted through early voting and by casting mail-in ballots, a massive turnout that surpassed the state’s entire voter turnout from the 2016 presidential election.

Voting rights groups and civil rights organisations sought to block the measure, what the American Civil Liberties Union’s Texas director Andrew Segura called “another desperate and ludicrous attempt by extremists to block the will of the people and disrupt democracy."

Joe Straus, the former Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, also called the GOP lawsuit “patently wrong.”

“The Republican Party needs to return to a place where we win with ideas and persuasion rather than trying to intimidate and silence our fellow citizens,” he said on Sunday.

Following Monday’s ruling, Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said that “the court was right to reject this outrageous attempt to undermine a true and accurate vote count and improperly influence the outcome of the election.”