A new federal class-action lawsuit says Harris County is locking blind voters out of a basic promise of democracy: a truly secret ballot. The case argues that blind residents who vote by mail are effectively forced to rely on caregivers, nursing-home staff, or volunteers to read and mark their choices, rather than being able to fill out ballots on their own. Plaintiffs say that the setup violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act because it strips blind voters of the privacy and independence that should come with casting a ballot. They want a federal judge to order county officials to offer a secure way for voters with print disabilities to mark ballots electronically, then print and return them by mail or in person.
What the lawsuit says
Disability Rights Texas filed the suit on Tuesday representing the National Federation of the Blind of Texas and four Harris County voters with disabilities. One of them, Ted Galanos, says he is blind, does not read braille, and has had multiple mail-in ballots mishandled or rejected. Galanos told reporters he has repeatedly had to depend on nursing-home staff and volunteers to complete his ballots, a process he describes as both error-prone and humiliating. If you are lucky enough to live with somebody who you trust, attorney Sashi Nisankarao said, people make mistakes, according to the Houston Chronicle.
How an accessible RAVBM would work
The plaintiffs emphasize they are not asking for internet voting. Instead, they want Harris County to offer a remote accessible vote-by-mail, or RAVBM, system that lets voters use screen readers or other assistive tools to privately mark their choices on a computer or similar device. The voter would then print a completed ballot packet and return it using the same methods as any other mail ballot.
Bexar County already rolled out that kind of setup, using a system called OmniBallot, after a mix of litigation and administrative action pushed officials to make absentee voting accessible to blind residents. According to Bexar County, OmniBallot walks eligible blind voters through requesting an electronic absentee packet, marking their selections with assistive technology, then printing the materials so they can be mailed or dropped off like any other ballot.
Precedent and potential costs
Advocates are pointing straight at the Bexar County fight as the blueprint for what they are trying to accomplish in Harris County. In that earlier case, a federal court issued a permanent injunction that required the county to implement a RAVBM system and oversaw the rollout of the accessible absentee option.
Records from that case show the price tag when a county ends up on the losing side of an accessibility lawsuit. The court awarded the plaintiffs $111,162.75 in attorneys' fees and $1,630 in costs. Those numbers are laid out in materials from Disability Rights Texas and in court documents available on Justia.
Harris County's position
The lawsuit says Harris County officials refused to extend their existing RAVBM system to voters with print disabilities. According to the complaint, the county told advocates that the Texas Election Code does not authorize electronic ballots for disabled residents and effectively bars them from making that change. The plaintiffs also allege that county representatives stopped responding to their outreach in September 2024.
The Harris County Attorney's Office did not provide immediate comment on the suit, and a representative of the county clerk's office said it could not discuss ongoing litigation, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Where this fits in the larger legal fight
This case is landing in the middle of a broader legal showdown over how Texas' post-2021 voting laws affect people with disabilities. Federal courts have been reviewing a consolidated set of challenges to those rules, with plaintiffs arguing that a range of requirements make it harder for disabled voters to cast a ballot. Judges have also issued decisions underscoring that the ADA covers every part of an election program, including how people vote by mail.
That legal backdrop, including the court's detailed findings in La Unifn del Pueblo Entero v. Abbott as summarized by FindLaw, is central to the arguments Disability Rights Texas is now bringing against Harris County.
What comes next
The new case is pending in federal court in Harris County. It will go through the usual early phases of discovery and legal briefing before a judge decides whether the county has to broaden its RAVBM access.
If the plaintiffs win, the court could order Harris County to provide an accessible ballot-marking portal for voters with print disabilities and could award attorneys' fees in a range similar to the Bexar County case. Disability advocates say the lawsuit sends a clear signal to local election officials that it may be less painful to fix accessibility problems up front than to wait for a judge to force the issue.
