» Texas Democrats to double vote-by-mail outreach.

U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear party’s vote-by-mail case before its summer recess

The Texas Democratic Party said Monday it will send 815,000 mail-in ballot applications to voters over 65, nearly doubling the number of applications sent out this cycle already.

The total of 1.75 million ballot applications sent out is something of an admission by the party that its lawsuit seeking to expand vote-bymail access to all Texans is unlikely to succeed.

“Elections are won or lost with vote-by-mail,” party executive director Manny Garcia said. “Now more than ever, to have our seniors vote safely, voting by mail is the best option for them.”

More than 16 million Texans are registered to vote as the two major political parties race to sign up as many new voters as they can ahead of the 2020 election.

As of now, voters under 65 years old must have a reason for voting by mail, such as a disability or trip out of town that prevents them from showing up at the polls in person.

The U.S. Supreme Court in midJune declined to take up the party’s vote-by-mail case before its summer recess, sending it back to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a ruling.

Lawyers could take the case to the Supreme Court again, but there’s no telling whether that could happen in time for the Nov. 3 election, nor whether the high court would select the case for review.

In the mail-in ballot initiative launching Monday, the party will target the five largest counties in Texas — Harris, Bexar, Tarrant, Dallas

and Travis, spokesman Abhi Rahman said.

Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins this year made the unprecedented decision to send mail ballot applications to all registered voters aged 65 and older. Hollins has said he plans to do the same for the general election.

In the Democratic primary runoff this May, more than 51,000 people in Harris County voted by mail, nearly twice as many as in the

March primary.

Texas Republicans have criticized such efforts, though the party’s voters tend to skew older and tend to vote by mail in droves. A May survey from Rice University showed about 42 percent

of Harris County Republicans, compared to about 68 percent of the county’s Democrats, said they were “very likely” to vote by mail if the presidential election had been held then.

That could be in part because of strong messaging by top Republicans in Texas as well as President Donald Trump about the potential

for voter fraud associated with the method.

Trump has backtracked on some of that rhetoric in recent days. Last week, he encouraged people in the battleground state of Florida to vote by mail, implying in a tweet that Republican-led states have better mail-in voting systems than Democratic-led ones.