⁍ The Texas Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that in-person voting can begin next week.

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⁍ It rejected requests by some of the state’s top Republicans to push back the start of early voting.

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⁍ Texas is a longtime Republican stronghold but this year President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden are fighting what could be a tight race to win the state’s electoral votes.

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– Early voting in Texas can begin next week, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, rejecting a request from top Republicans who argued the move violated the state’s constitution. Texas Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote in the court’s majority opinion that the request to overturn Gov. Greg Abbott’s proclamation had come too late and should have first been made in the lower courts, Reuters reports. To change the schedule now, he wrote, would ‘threaten voter confusion.’ Neither Abbott’s office nor Allen West, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, which had asked the court to overturn Abbott’s proclamation, immediately responded to requests for comment. Republicans have successfully beaten back some Democratic efforts to loosen who can vote by absentee ballots and how they may do so. The Texas Democratic Party lost a long legal fight last month to allow all Texans to vote by mail if they felt endangered by in-person voting because of the pandemic. Texas is one of the few US states that limits who can request absentee ballots. Only voters who are over the age of 65, have a disability, are confined to a jail, or will be out of town on Election Day can vote by mail. Earlier this month, Abbott declared that each county in the state will be limited to a single site for dropping off absentee ballots, drawing condemnation from Democrats and voting-rights advocates.