WASHINGTON — Texas is opening the door to an expansion of mail-in voting during the coronavirus outbreak, though the state is unlikely to heed calls to have every voter cast ballots by mail to avoid exposure to COVID-19 at polling places.

The state’s director of elections on Thursday sent guidance to elections officials in all 254 counties telling them that voters can ask for mail-in ballots if they are worried that coronavirus will make showing up to a polling place a danger to their health.

The guidance isn’t a mandate and it doesn’t create new policy. But it offers a green light to county officials to take a lenient approach in approving requests for mail-in ballots.

Democrats and voting rights advocates have pushed for states to expand voting by mail, arguing that forcing people to show up to polling places during the largest public health crisis in a century is tantamount to vote suppression. Texas has so far opted to delay elections, rather than fully expand mail-in voting, pushing the statewide runoffs from May to mid-July.

This year’s elections could end up being some of the most consequential in years, with control of the state House, a slew of congressional seats and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s re-election all on the line, not to mention the potential emergence of Texas as a battleground state in the presidential race.

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The guidance notes that the election code currently includes a “disability” clause that allows voters to apply for an absentee ballot if showing up at a polling place risks “injuring the voter’s health.” It suggests counties can get a court order to temporarily expand eligibility for mail-in voting — especially in areas under quarantine.

The guidance also suggests that counties be more lenient with curbside voting and says counties should consider recruiting and training more poll workers this year.

Advocates say the guidance seemingly opens the door for anyone worried about coronavirus to apply for a mail-in ballot — but the state needs to be more clear. Texas is one of the few states that still require voters younger than 65 to have an excuse to cast a ballot by mail. Fewer than 7 percent of Texas voters mailed in ballots in 2018.

"This is a big step in the right direction,” said Bay Scoggin, director of Texas Public Interest Research Group, one of dozens of groups that have urged the state to expand mail-in voting as at least one option for this year’s elections. “While we still want a more concrete expansion of vote by mail, this plan gives guidance to counties on a number of important issues.”

Democrats say the state still isn’t going far enough.

“In the middle of this public health crisis, we must all be working together to keep people safe and healthy, while also keeping our democracy moving forward,” said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat. “This should include a statewide no-excuse vote-by-mail program that will give every eligible Texan the opportunity to make their voice heard in this year’s electoral process and guarantee their well-being.”

Every Texas Democrat in Congress wrote a letter to Abbott this week urging an expansion of voting by mail, pointing out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests shifting that way for 2020 elections.

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The state guidance handed down this week comes after the Democratic party and a slew of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against the state to force it to offer mail-in voting as an option to everyone.

“Right now, no voter we know of has immunity to COVID-19, and physical polling places could risk exposure and cause injury by way of sickness,” said Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas. “We believe that election law provides a remedy for all voters to vote by mail, but we need clarity from the state. Texas already allows no-excuse vote-by-mail for voters aged 65 and up, and we need our statewide lawmakers to step up and expand the benefit to everyone.”

But even advocates for universal mail-in voting admit that shifting entirely to mail-in voting would be a heavy lift for states, especially with such a quick turnaround.

The state would have identify and mail ballots to all voters, spend millions to hire a new wave of elections officials, set up drop boxes and launch a massive PR campaign to educate voters on the new system — a process that has taken some states years — all within the span of seven months.

Democrats in Washington have sought to include funding to help states make that shift in the coronavirus relief bills Congress has passed. The $2 trillion stimulus package Congress passed last month includes $400 million to help states bolster elections during the outbreak.

Texas could get as much as $24 million of that. But the funding requires a state match, and with the Legislature out until next year, it’s unlikely the state will be able to put up the money to get that new funding.

Even if Texas could swiftly access the funding — which would require a special session — civil rights groups say the $400 million in the last stimulus is far from enough to cover the costs of switching to all-mail voting. The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute based in New York City, estimates it would take closer to $2 billion.

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House Democrats are pushing to get that funding including in the next coronavirus relief bill — which won’t happen until the end of April at the earliest. And the chances of that are slim. President Donald Trump calling Democrats' attempts to put funding for mail-in voting into coronavirus relief bills “totally crazy.”

“They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump recently said on Fox News.

The president’s remark was taken by his critics as confirmation that the GOP mainly objects to mail-in voting because it would make political participation easier for disenfranchised and minority voters who lean Democratic.

“I think expanding the franchise is something that they have spent years and years and years trying to stop,” said Page Gardner, founder of the Voter Participation Center, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing voter registration among people of color, unmarried women, and young people. “This is within a longstanding playbook.”

“If you think about Texas … just the vast number of people in Texas who will be wanting to vote, but may be concerned about it if the virus is still around,” Gardner said. “Unless this is fixed, it could be a real blow and quite damaging to our democracy.”

ben.wermund@chron.com