BRYAN, Texas — The John R. Lewis voting rights act has been one of the nation's biggest stories the past few weeks.
The bill is a response to laws passed in 19 states including Texas after the 2020 election, which opponents say make it harder to vote, especially for people of color.
These laws are causing counties to see higher rejections on mail-in ballot applications.
Brazos county elections administrator Trudy Hancock says they've had to reject ballots too.
"I know that some counties are seeing a big reject percentage," Hancock said. "We just now started receiving a lot of applications, which is really late in the process for us. Where have usually already have a big surprise of requests coming in."
If passed the John R. Lewis voting rights act will set a minimum number of days states would offer early voting and would allow voting by mail for any reason, among other things.
But with all Senate Republicans united against passing the reforms, the bill is set to hit a dead end.
"The Republican party and I voted against this bill and have voted against this bill because it federalizes all elections," Congressman Pete Sessions said. "Even for an election for a dog catcher in Brazos county."
The biggest reason Hancock says her office is rejecting ballots currently is because of identifying information.
"The new law requires that the application contains your driver's license number or your social security number," Hancock said. "That has to be verified against the state database that we work all our voter registration applications through."
Hancock says some people don't like to give that information through the mail, but without it, due to the new state law, your application for a mail-in ballot can't be accepted.