Willie Nelson and wife had ballot applications rejected under Texas’ GOP-championed voting law

Texas’ restrictive and confusing new voting law has even thrown one of the state’s most revered music legends for a loop.

Country singer Willie Nelson and his wife Annie D’Angelo-Nelson made two attempts to vote in the March 1 primary before they finally were able to get absentee ballots from Travis County elections officials, the Associated Press reports.

According to the wire service, D’Angelo-Nelson told the Austin American-Statesman that the couple’s initial applications were rejected over inconsistent identification information provided on the forms.

That mixup over ID requirements has been common under the state’s Republican-backed voting law, which led to elections officials statewide rejecting 13% of mail ballots for the March 1 primary, according AP number crunching.

Texas elections officials pitched out 23,000 ballots under the new law — one of many adopted in GOP-controlled states in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s repeated lies about the 2020 election being riddled with fraud.

D’Angelo-Nelson told  the Statesman that while she and her husband were finally able to participate in the primary, she’s worried about Texans who aren’t as capable of figuring out the new system.

The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Texas over its controversial voting law, championed by Gov. Greg Abbott, saying lawmakers deliberately crafted the measure to disenfranchise Texans likely to vote for Democratic candidates.

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This article appears in Mar 23 – Apr 5, 2022.