Abbott’s mail ballot campaign causes stir

Gov. Greg Abbott is just trying to help some older folks vote. Oh sure, he hopes they’ll vote for him and that’s why his campaign staff picked out these particular older folks. But the overall goal of this effort can be couched as a helpful effort to help people vote. Maybe.

I recently told you about it. Now I can tell you about how Abbott’s effort has caused woes for some local county election officials.

Abbott sent mail ballot applications to selected Texans over 65, ones we can be sure were selected because his campaign has reason to believe they might vote for him. Nothing wrong with that. In turn, voters who got the applications — and a robocall from Abbott about the applications — could fill them out and send them to their local county election official and wait for a mail ballot to show up in their mailbox.

Everything was good to this point. Then folks started sending in the applications.

That’s when problems began for some election officials, as first noticed by the San Antonio Express-News’ Peggy Fikac, who’s always good at noticing things that need to be noticed. Thank you, journalism.

The mail ballot applications have a section in which voters designate whether they want a ballot for the Democratic primary or the Republican primary. But lots of folks sent the form in without designating a primary. That’s a problem.

The Express-News reported that Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen has received hundreds of the Abbott-related mail according