Virus emergency ballots can be had
The pandemic has caused record numbers of people to request mailin ballots. Some San Antonio voters are so determined to make their votes count they’re hand-delivering their mail-in ballots.
But what happens if you contract COVID-19 after the Oct. 23 deadline to apply for a mail ballot?
Not only would you not have a mail-in ballot, you wouldn’t be able to leave self-isolation to send or hand-deliver it.
Fortunately, the Texas secretary of state’s election protocols have a contingency plan in place for that scenario.
“If a voter contracts COVID-19 (or other sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on Election Day without a likelihood of needing personal assistance or of injuring the voter’s health) after the deadline to submit an application for a ballot by mail, the voter should
contact their county election officer for more details about submitting an Application for Emergency Early Voting Ballot Due to Sickness or Physical Disability,” the protocols say.
In Bexar County, there’s a longstanding process for last-minute illnesses.
A representative (friend, family member, etc.) gets an application for the emergency ballot from the Elections Department at 1103 S. Frio St. The representative takes that application, gets signatures from you and your doctor, then returns it to the department.
Election officials will give the representative a ballot for you. The representative brings it to you for you to fill out. That same representative has to be the one who brings the completed ballot back to the South Frio Street elections office no later than 7 p.m. Nov. 3.
To use this process, your illness has to begin on or after Thursday, the last day before the deadline to receive applications.
The theory is that if you’re hospitalized on that date, you won’t have time to get a mail-in ballot. But if you became ill several days before the deadline, you had time to submit a regular application and have the ballot mailed to the hospital.
Contracting COVID-19 is considered the same as being hospitalized, officials said. They don’t want a person with COVID-19 running around the city to cast a ballot.
As of Monday, the county had distributed 105,447 mail ballots and 62,672 completed ballots were back in the elections office, for a 59.4 percent return rate, with two weeks of early voting still to go.
In 2016, the elections office sent out about 58,000 mail ballots, and 39,000 were returned by Election Day — about 67 percent.