Washington has 100% mail voting, which is not only convenient for voters, but saves taxpayers the huge expense of polling places. There’s no evidence mail voting is less secure or leads to more voting fraud (see, e.g., story here).
But if you move to Texas, only voters “65 or older, voters who will be out of their home county during in-person voting, those who are sick or disabled, and people who are incarcerated but still have the right to vote” can cast absentee (mail) ballots.
The difference is that Washington is governed by Democrats, while Texas is run by Republicans. And Republicans really don’t like mail voting. Even if you’re eligible under one of the categories above, you may not be able to do so, because they threaten election workers with fines and jail for encouraging voters to vote by mail, even if they’re entitled to do so (read story here).
My immediate reaction was this violates the election workers’ free speech rights. You can’t constitutionally jail someone for encouraging someone to do something that’s perfectly legal and they’re legally entitled to do.
A federal judge agreed, and issued an injunction against enforcing that law. But who knows how this ruling will fare in higher courts loaded with radical conservative judges? Particularly in the Supreme Court, you can’t count on anything these days.
My advice is, don’t move to Texas. But why would you want to live in such a place anyway?