Troubling report from South Texas: “One in five people who cast early ballots in Hidalgo’s City Council election brought someone else into the voting booth for help, Hidalgo County Elections Administrator Yvonne Ramon said Thursday. While Texas law allows voters to seek assistance in special circumstances, unusually high assistance rates often indicate political machines — and, critics say, voter coercion — at work. Of the 2,144 people who voted early in the Hidalgo election, 483 had help, Ramon said, about 22.5 percent of voters.”

As with absentee ballots, the ability to verify how someone vote through “assistance” facilitates both vote buying and coercion.  This certainly merits further investigation.