🚨 Texas Will Offer Online Voter Registration Through DMV After Democratic Lawsuit [View all]

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Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
🚨BREAKING: Texas settles federal lawsuit with @dscc, @dccc, @texasdemocrats and civil rights groups to allow online voter registration when an eligible voter renews/updates their driver's license online.

Proud to be a part of this effort in court!

Texas Will Offer Online Voter Registration Through DMV After Democratic Lawsuit
Read the settlement here.
democracydocket.com
10:29 AM · Aug 2, 2021

https://www.democracydocket.com/2021/08/texas-will-offer-online-voter-registration-through-dmv-after-democratic-lawsuit/


WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last Friday, individual Texan voters, the Texas Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) settled a five-year long lawsuit with Texas over its noncompliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The settlement outlines the state’s plans to permanently offer simultaneous voter registration when an eligible voter renews or updates his or her driver’s licenses or ID cards online — an option not offered before this litigation.

The lawsuit, filed in March 2016 by the Texas Civil Rights Project on behalf of individual Texas voters, challenged the state’s misleading practice of providing the option to register to vote when completing online transactions with the transportation agency. Notably, checking this option did not actually register someone to vote, which violated the NVRA’s requirement that states offer voter registration or the ability to update registrations when an eligible voter obtains, renews or updates his or her driver’s license. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found that this practice violated the NVRA and 14th Amendment and struck the law down, but after the voters updated their registration, the court found that they no longer had standing to sue. The Texas Democratic Party, DSCC and DCCC successfully intervened in the case to expand this victory. The court ordered the state to comply with the NVRA in August 2020 and since then, over one million Texans have registered to vote while completing an online driver’s license transaction. The settlement makes the court-ordered compliance permanent throughout the state.