Missing mail-in ballots have some Harris County residents seeking recourse.

Some residents of Harris County seeking recourse

Harris County has sent out close to 120,000 mailin ballots to residents who cannot make it to the polls, but a number of voters are saying their ballots never made it to them.

For voters like Olivia Taylor, who is studying at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, a missing ballot means traveling back home to vote in person. For others, like Alex Parizot, a student at Purdue University, it means not voting at all.

The prevelance of the issue is unknown but ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle received multiple complaints of people registered in Harris County who had not received their mail-in ballots.

Close to 75 percent of the 119,742 absentee ballots sent out by the Harris County Clerk’s office have been filled out and returned, according to county statistics.

The last day to apply for a ballot by mail in Texas was Oct. 26.

Taylor said she requested a mail-in ballot the day applications went live on the county website, but had not received it by Monday.

“I’ve checked my mail three times a day,” Taylor said. “I feel like my vote is being blocked.”

When Taylor reached

out to the Harris County Clerk’s office and asked what her options were, she said she was told to drive to Orange County and vote provisionally, which would be unlikely to work because she is not registered there. Instead, Taylor has asked her professors if she can miss class Tuesday so she can drive home to Spring to vote.

“There are some things in life more important than school,” Taylor said. “As much as I love my major and my classes, I feel like it’s important for my voice to be heard in Texas.”

Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, the county’s chief election official, said a small percentage of absentee voters have this problem. The county resends hundreds of ballots that do not make it to voters on the first try, he said.

“It’s a little frustrating to us,” Stanart said. “We respond to phone calls to us and we want to make sure every voter who requests a ballot receives one.”

When a ballot is returned, the

county checks the address and sends it back out if it is correct. If someone calls to say their ballot never arrived, they must submit a request in writing to cancel their original ballot so a new one can be mailed. The request must be in writing because of concerns a campaign could try to cancel ballots en masse, according to Stanart.

Voters vent anger

Parizot said he requested his ballot the first week of October. As the election inched closer

with no ballot in sight, he called the Beto O’Rourke voter hotline to see what his options were.

“They asked me what county I was from and they told me it’s not a surprise because Harris County has had problems with absentee ballots,” Parizot said.

A subsequent call to the county Oct. 29 revealed his ballot had been mailed Oct. 19. It never arrived, he said.

“I’m angry,” Parizot said. “I usually tell my friends who don’t vote that you can’t complain if you don’t participate. Now I can’t, even though I want to.”

Shannon Sims, a freelance journalist based in Brazil, said she tried to apply for an absentee ballot through the county clerk’s website, harrisvotes.com, more than a month ago. When that failed, she took to Twitter as well as email, asking Harris County for assistance. A county employee said the website was down. The clerk’s office emailed her an absentee application but it was weeks before she got a ballot via email last week, an option available to overseas voters.

Sims said she is unsure whether she can cast her ballot properly.

The ballot includes multiple requirements for how it can be sent back and she said she is unsure whether she could get it to Harris County by the deadline of 5 p.m. Nov. 7.

Stanart said it is up to voters to let the county know within 30 days of an election if they have a problem receiving their mail-in ballots.

“The number we’re resending is small, but we don’t want one ballot that is improperly delivered,” Stanart said. “It’s not something anyone is ignoring.”

Inmates’ stamp issues

Another population that votes via mail-in ballot are inmates in jail awaiting trial. A state commission is looking into the matter after one jailed Harris County man complained that several inmates were unable to vote because the county requires postage to send back the completed ballot.

Brandon Wood, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said the agency had been alerted to the complaint Monday.

If an inmate meets the criteria established for indigence, the

county would be expected to provide postage for mail-in ballots, according to Wood.

“Now, if the county provided and the inmate then used it for personal correspondence, it opens up a different perspective,” he said. This was the first complaint the commission has fielded this election cycle from a jail inmate alleging an inability to vote, Wood said.

Regardless of access to stamps, there was no indication jail ballots had been rejected, according to Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Spencer. He added that if any last-minute complaints surface, jail staff will walk ballots over to the clerk’s office in person if necessary.

“Any legal option that we have to get inmates’ ballots to the clerk’s office in time, we will do it,” Spencer said. “Any legal way to get it done, we’ll facilitate that. We’'re not going to let the lack of a stamp cause someone’s legal vote to not be counted.”