Early this month, Nueces County resident Linda White received a surprising piece of mail: Form 5-22a, a “notice to voter who must provide identification.” The notice, sent by the county clerk’s office, warned that her vote wouldn’t count unless she attached a copy of a government photo ID to her mail-in ballot. The problem was, it wasn’t true.
“I’m 70 years old, and I’ve been voting in Nueces County since I was 18,” said White, who received one of the letters. “I sent in multiple copies of ID so they’d be sure and know who I was.” She called the experience “very, very intimidating.”
White was one of around 1,500 mail-in voters—people over 65, voters with disabilities, and citizens out of the country on election day—who received proof-of-ID notices by mistake. “We had an unfortunate incident, very unintentional,” Nueces County Clerk Kara Sands told county commissioners during a meeting on Wednesday. “We feel terrible about it, my staff feels terrible about it, and we have implemented procedures to prevent this from happening again.”
