Texas election: Making sure your mail-in ballot count

All right, you guys know it is election season, so just about every time you go to the mailbox, you're probably going to get some piece of information there about some candidate running for some office, right? But now some folks in the Houston area say they've been getting some information that could potentially cost you your mail-in ballot. You're getting some misinformation here. Let's go to McKenna Earnhardt. She's joining us now live from Fort Bend County outside of the Stafford City Hall. They got an early voting center down there. McKenna, what's going on? Yeah, so if you're not coming to the early voting center and you're casting a mail-in ballot, you're going to want to listen up. So a viewer reached out saying that they received what is a voting report card in the mail, right? And it told them that their mail-in ballot just needs to be postmarked by Election Day. Simple, easy enough, right? But the problem is that leaves out like half of the Texas election law. So yes, it needs to be postmarked by Election Day. But there's a whole lot of more to that. So under Texas election law, that postmark only protects you if your county elections office physically receives the ballot by 5 p.m. the very next day. So with postal delays across our area, just because you put something in the mail on Tuesday doesn't mean it's going to make it across town by 5 p.m. Wednesday. And so I asked a U of H law professor about- Why do these flyers leave out some of this very crucial information and is just having your postmark by election day too big of a risk? I think it would be a mistake for voters to believe that if they simply postmark their ballot by election day, their ballot will be counted if it is put in the mail. The Texas rule is that the ballot must in addition to being postmarked by election day be received By 5 p.m. the day after the election. All right, so if you still have that mail-in ballot sitting on your kitchen table, you have two options, all right? So you've got two pretty safe options too. You can bring that mail-in ballot with you to a in-person voting location, early voting site or on election day and you can surrender it and you can just vote in person on the Or you can hand deliver that completed ballot directly to your county elections administrator on election day. Of course, just be sure to bring your photo ID. Also, Anthony, if you mailed in your ballot, you can check its status on the Secretary of State's website, which I would highly recommend doing. Back to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that, McKenna. Much appreciated.