Texas begins letting people register to vote online when they're updating their driver's licenses

[TexasTowelie]

by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Texas Tribune


When Jarrod Stringer updated his driver’s license address in 2014, the Texas Department of Public Safety website asked if he wanted to register to vote. He clicked yes and thought he was registered. That fall, when he went to vote in San Antonio, he was denied. According to the system, he had never registered. It was past the registration deadline, so he couldn’t vote.

That kicked off a six-year legal battle that included two lawsuits for the right for Texans to register to vote online while updating their licenses.

“It’s traumatic when you can’t vote,” Stringer said. “It’s implicitly saying, ‘You don’t have a voice. You can’t participate in change.’”

On Wednesday, Stringer won that “mind-boggling” fight with the state of Texas two weeks before the deadline to register to vote in 2020. Acting on a federal judge’s orders, the state updated its online systems to allow people to add their names to the voter rolls when they update their licenses.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/23/register-vote-online-texas/

[Susan Calvin]

1. Wahoo!

And Wahoo for the Texas Tribune. Tomorrow I need to remember to start throwing them some bucks.

[yellowdogintexas]

2. I have heard that even voter registration forms completed at the DMV by the voter

do not always make it to the County ELections office.

Whether or not it is true, the forms were reportedly found in the trash, or just never delivered

The two computer systems were not linked so the DMV info was not going to the Secretary of State's office. It is utterly ridiculous that such a simple thing could not be implemented.

Don't these people realize they are harming their own voters as well?