This year provided a hectic night of voting all across the nation. And Abilene was no different. 39,530 Taylor County voters participated in this year's midterm election, about 45% of the 86,137 registered voters.
And with new rules and systems in place this year Taylor County election officials say the election went smoother than prior years. Taylor County has never had issues with election reliability. But after the 2020 Presidential Election led to claims of voter fraud across the nation, election officials made some changes. Some were concerned more ballots would be denied. But Freda Ragan, Taylor County Elections Administrator, said that wasn’t the case, "The new rules allows for the voter to correct the defect of the carrier."
According to Ragan the state's elections administrators now have more power to correct mistakes instead of the ballot not counting, “If we get a carrier envelope in here and it’s defective, the ID numbers don’t match or what have you. Then we have the authority to return that to the voter.”
Taylor County received 1,527 mail ballots, and rejected 57. Ragan says those results show that the change was effective this year, and she says she hopes to see more progress with mail-in ballots soon .