Texas legal battles over voting could have an impact on election

HOUSTON - When retired elementary school teacher Marilyn Wolfe and her husband tried to drop off their completed ballots at a county office outside Houston a week ago, they were turned away.

Wolfe, 82, said a clerk explained to them and several other couples trying to deliver ballots that they had requested and received by mail that the completed ballots could not be accepted at the site - one of a dozen in the county - because of an order from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor's last-minute proclamation had limited each of the state's 254 counties, including Houston's Democrat-led Harris County, the nation's third largest by population, to a single ballot drop site.

A federal judge overruled Abbott that day, but by the next day the state had successfully appealed to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"We were just totally flabbergasted," Wolfe said.

Texans are supposed to be able to vote several