• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. voter registration>

Democrats launch bid to register 1 million Texans despite the pandemic

Sara Swann
https://twitter.com/saramswann?lang=en
April 21, 2020
Texans vote on Super Tuesday

Texans waiting to vote in the March primary. The state's Democratic Party wants to register 1 million more by November.

Edward A. Ornelas/Getty Images

Texas Democrats announced an aggressive plan Tuesday to boost the ranks of voters in the second most populous state by at least a million, despite the coronavirus crisis making such efforts harder than ever.

Texas is one of nine states without online registration, meaning would-be voters must either submit an application in person or print out and mail in a document found online. Several of the required steps are already difficult for poor people and will be further complicated by closures and social distancing until the Covid-19 outbreak subsides.


To ease this burden, the state Democratic Party launched "Register Texas," an online tool allowing any resident, regardless of political affiliation, to request a registration form and have it mailed to them along with a postage-paid envelope already addressed to the proper county clerk. Visitors to the site can also check and update their registration status.

Texas has about 16 million registered voters. The Democrats believe there are as many as 5 million people in the state who are eligible but not registered and their goal is to sign up at least 1 million of them. (The nonpartisan civic engagement group Register2Vote says that could be the total of unregistered across the state.)

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

"However many people request an application, that's how many we'll send out," said Luke Warford, voter expansion director for the Texas Democratic Party.

Either way, a turnout increase of several hundred thousand, especially in Latino and black communities in the cities and suburbs, would improve Democrats' longshot chances of turning the state blue on the electoral vote map for the first time in 44 years — while also flipping as many as six House seats now in GOP hands.

Boosting registration will help, but voting rights groups and Democrats have also filed an array of lawsuits hoping, among other things, to force the state to relax rules restricting voting by mail and the casting of straight-ticket ballots.

Demographers say the changing Texas population assures it will become a battleground state sometime this decade. Two years ago, Beto O'Rourke came within 215,000 votes (2.6 percentage points) of ousting GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and becoming the first Democrat to win a statewide race since 1994.

In a typical presidential election year, the Texas Democrats would be hosting a series of in-person "get out the vote" events, but the coronavirus pandemic has ruled that out. Instead, the party has shifted its efforts online to reach as many eligible voters as possible before November.

The Register Texas platform is available in both English and Spanish and is powered by an open source tool created by Register2Vote.

Warford identified an additional benefit of the registration drive: The party will have built a bolstered database of people who can become a core of its "get out the vote" drives in November.

Texas is one of 16 states that requires a specified reason to vote absentee. The Democrats have gone to court to say the "sickness" excuse is broadly worded enough to allow people to cite fear of viral infection during a public health emergency.

"It's easy to think of the things that we're doing as political, but voter registration should not be political," Warford said. "This is about people accessing their constitutional right to vote."

From Your Site Articles
  • Millions can't register to vote without violating stay-at-home curbs ›
  • Texas civil rights group fights for online voter registration - The Fulcrum ›
  • Online voter registration ban in Texas survives in court - The Fulcrum ›
  • Texas-based voter registration platform expands nationwide - The ... ›
  • Two new groups promote online registration, voting by mail - The Fulcrum ›
  • SPLC puts $30 million toward voter registration - The Fulcrum ›
  • Texas adds 500,000 voters thanks to online registration - The Fulcrum ›
  • Voting registration advocates grapple with new election laws - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Texas Democrats launch aggressive voter-protection effort - The ... ›
  • Texas Democrats launch largest voter registration campaign to ... ›
  • Texas Democrats Plan To Mail Registration Forms And Postage To ... ›
voter registration
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Robert Pearl

Caught in a draft

Lawrence Goldstone

Congress shows signs of bipartisanship with retirement benefits bill

Mario H. Lopez
latest News

Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Our Staff
20 May

GOP split: Far right gains ground in East, while losing out West

Steven Rosenfeld
20 May

Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Our Staff
20 May

Democratic senators seek $20 billion in election funding

Reya Kumar
19 May

Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Our Staff
19 May

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Reya Kumar
18 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Your Take
Doug Mastriano

GOP split: Far right gains ground in East, while losing out West

Leveraging big ideas
Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Leadership
Statue of William Henry Seward

Imperfection and perseverance

Civic Ed
​Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Democratic senators seek $20 billion in election funding

Government
Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Leadership