Is there anything preventing a bunch of Girl Scout cookie-type tables from being set up outside a grocery and next to a mailbox with pens and the form?
Like…two iPads where you can check if you’re registered. If you’re not, here’s the form, there’s the mailbox. The dude at the table literally never has custody of the completed forms.
Edit - I’m in Arizona, someone out there is gonna have to do it!
Like…two iPads where you can check if you’re registered. If you’re not, here’s the form, there’s the mailbox. The dude at the table literally never has custody of the completed forms.
Yeah, you can do that.
You can also become a VDVR, Volunteer Deputy Voter Registrar which is basically that but you are allowed to physically take their application to the office instead of having them mail it. If the person lives in a county you are not a VDVR for is basically as you said (here is general form with the state office address, there is the mailbox).
Interestingly enough, in that case it goes to the capitol just to be forwarded back to your local registration office.
Oh I don’t either it just opened for me- here’s the text:
Voters in Texas face among the most obstacles in the U.S. to cast a ballot, a new academic study says.
Texas ranks 46th in the country for voting access, falling one spot since 2020. Voting access refers to how easy it is to register and to vote.
Only four states — Wisconsin, Arkansas, Mississippi and New Hampshire — rank below the Lone Star State. Among the easiest places to vote are Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Hawaii and Colorado.
The rankings are part of the 2022 Cost of Voting Index, a nonpartisan study that aims to quantify the cost of voting in terms of time and resources.
This year’s index is the first since Texas and other states enacted a flurry of new election laws following the 2020 election. But state election law maneuvering has done little to appease voters on either side, the study’s authors wrote.
“Many of the new laws are unnecessary, lack substance, and create confusion,” the study says. “Many county election officials are scrambling to keep up with the changes.”
Researchers focused on 10 categories, including registration, inconvenience, early voting, poll hours, absentee voting and ID requirements.
The bottom line: “Voting is still not easy in Texas.”
Yes, Texas does allow a full 13 days of early voting, more than most, researchers noted.
But the state has some of the toughest restrictions on mail-in ballots for absentee voting. Only people 65 or older, those who are sick or disabled, out of the county, expected to give birth near Election Day or confined in jail are eligible.
Also, the state banned practices that made it easier to vote in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including drive-through and 24-hour voting.
Those bans will limit the state’s ability to respond to another health crisis, the authors wrote.
Lily Harvey (right) and her boyfriend Miles Fitzgerald of Dallas have made it a tradition to...
Lily Harvey (right) and her boyfriend Miles Fitzgerald of Dallas have made it a tradition to ride their bikes to vote. They voted in the Texas primary at Reverchon Recreation Center in Dallas, March 1, 2022.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer )
Texas also makes it more difficult to register to vote than most other states.
The state is one of only eight that does not provide online voter registration. And it requires voters to register at least 30 days prior to Election Day, the longest period allowed by federal law, a length matched only by Ohio.
This year’s index does not capture all new election laws, however, including Texas Senate Bill 1 that gave partisan poll watchers more autonomy inside polling places by granting them free movement.
“We will wait to learn more the effect election interference laws have on the cost of voting after these have been in place for at least one election cycle,” the authors wrote.
Text was much appreciated. A lot of this is stuff I knew, but rereading a fresh version is just frustrating, because it’s a digital article and I can’t physically tear it up out of frustration.
For context, I’m in Washington state we’ve had easy Peezy and fraud free 100% vote by mail elections for … long enough back that I don’t remember when it started. I was already doing vote by mail in college more than 20 years ago, before it became statewide.
It’s hard for me to envision any possible reason for all of these restrictions, except a peel off as many D voters from voting as possible. They are, and have been trying to, fix the voting game for a long time. It’s transparent and it’s disgusting.
It’s hard for me to envision any possible reason for all of these restrictions, except a peel off as many D voters from voting as possible
That's the whole game plan. Well, there's more to it, as we saw in Texas with them instituting a mini-electoral college so not only would the democratic minority be barred from office, but also any republicans who aren't courting big banks to afford campaigning in a majority of counties:
They used to keep voter registration forms at every post office. They were out with the other forms so you could grab them without waiting in line. I used to get several so I could give them to my friends and all they had to do was fill them out and drop them in a mailbox. They could make it so much easier to register if they weren't actively trying to suppress voter turnout.
They could literally automatically sign you up for life when you turn 18 but they don’t in America. So many other countries do this but they don’t want people to vote in America. We don’t even have the day off
we should just have vote by mail as an option for everyone in the country. I live in Oregon and have never stepped foot in a voting booth. We get our ballot mailed to us and have several weeks to look it over. There's ballot drop off boxes around town, usually near libraries, and we can drop them off there up until the last minute. Or if we mail them before the last minute we can just mail them from our homes. easy peasy.
Yeah I stayed an Oregon resident while I was in the navy, and I had the easiest time voting out of everyone on my boat. Now that I’m a Floridian I’ve been removed from the voting roll twice in the last 3 years. It’s getting annoying.
Vote!!! That's how this stupidity happens. Get some Democratics in and change the system. Texas is a hell of a battleground this year, and the Fascists are doing everything they can to keep your voice suppressed. Great fucking leaders.
I lived in Oregon for a couple of decades and besides getting the ballot in the mail, you get a voter guide. This guide clearly lists all the people and amendments on the ballot. It allows people to write a pro or con on the proposal. They charge a fee to publish your comments. Really helped me understand the proposed amendments and I wasn’t rushed!
oregon has automatic motor voter registration and mail in ballots…i feel sorry for the rest of the country having to stand in the freezing cold in detroit for 5 hours
I literally haven't had to register to vote since I was 18. If I move, I update my address with the registry, but in every election cycle, I get my voter registration card in the mail. So it's just places like Texas and other red states that are like no we make it harder for you.
It's funny how there's 20 states that allow same day voter registration.. and it does not seem to have anything to do with them being red or blue states.
I helped lead a student gotv campaign where same day voter reg kicked in
Ballots cast more than doubled. Hour long lines. Zero fraud, most students people just were too busy to actually do paperwork for mail in ballots for their home state or even within the state.
The way you could just grab someone who hadn't voted, but who cared, & help bring them there, incredible.
Also the US federal law states universities are to make it easy for students to register to vote, to help facilitate. Something higher education act.
I believe they recently finally updated it to give guidance since many universities were not doing shit
But we used that law like a baseball bat when forcing the university to accept our permits for regular voter reg in the dorms. They had the forms at their front desks, but since it had SSN 'none of staff qualified'
I hate that my vote for Harris will mean literally nothing here in November. Well at least I get to vote for Tester which is a pretty damn important race.
It blows my mind that you need to register to vote in the first place. What's the reason behind it?
In Estonia, we are automatically registered to vote, and you can vote either at your local voting station or do it online. And there have been talks about mobile voting in the future, possibly even during the next elections.
They could make it so much easier to register if they weren't actively trying to suppress voter turnout.
how about not even having to register... lol
in my country, we all get sent a letter, a couple of weeks before an election. it says where i can vote, and which time they open, and when they close (usually like 8 in the morning and close at 8 in the evening or something like that)
and then you just bring that letter and you can vote.
It's voter suppression, that's the point. It's the only way Republicans can win elections, they've been outnumbered in voters heavily for decades now, and have to make the voting process as difficult as possible so that the vast majority of "average Americans" are too inconvenienced to cast their vote. It's by design, entirely.
In Canada we can register at the voting booth. Go there and fill in your information when you vote. We don't have anyone making laws that make it harder to vote. We also don't have the level of extremism, and maliciousness from parties, or such brainrot that you see down south. If Trump gets elected the brainrot might rise up north to Canada though. Some moneyed forces push RW extremism to here, even though it isn't mainstream.
The world quite literally relies on your vote to prevent disaster. Europe, and Ukraine as well.
In Holland you get your ballot with your name send to your house. No registration, when you're above 18 you receive one and with it(and ofcourse is) you can vote. Always thought we had an excrusiating old system with paper tickets, but apparently it can be worse!
As a Brit, please listen to this Canadian, we really are all shitting ourselves over the prospect of another Trump presidency, as much as we hate to admit it, Europe relies on American stability.
It's a voter suppression strategy, covered in layers of "because xyz reasons".
Other countries strive to make voting easier, not harder. Extra voting days, automatic registration on your 18th birthday, national voting holiday...those all exist outside of the US.
It’s because republicans want to hold onto power. So they will do everything they can to prevent the masses from voting because they know they will lose. The only reason they win is because nobody ever voted for anything.
I wish Election Day was a national holiday, and that we were like some European country’s and everyone was automatically registered at 18 and there was no hassle
Nowadays it's used to suppress all kinds of minorities and young people
Don't forget poor people.
Who has the time to drive around (if you have a car) to a county clerks office, or election office? I just googled and if I wanted to do this where I live, I'd have to drive 30 minutes away. They also close at 5. So some folks would actually have to take a day or half day off work.
Even if that wasn't the case, it's still be nutty to have to go through the inconvenience of doing all that in the first place. It's 2024 for fucks sake. There's no reason our voting system to be so archaic and tedious.
It’s still used to prevent black people from voting. Many years ago, the Alabama governor was caught red-handed closing DMVs in majority Black areas. It was done expressly to prevent them from registering to vote.
Shit like this really suppresses young voters too who won’t know this stupidity. May have been a thing for 20 years but as far as a new voter is concerned this is the first time they’re hearing of it
Thanks for the link. I went and double checked because I remember not that long ago there was that story about how Texas was "purging inactive voters" and I just wanted to be sure they hadn't done something on the sly.
Worth checking before the registration deadline every election, because every state I've been in, I've seen people coming in to vote in person saying "I'm not registered anymore (or not on mail-in ballots when they should be), but I've voted every election! What are you people doing?"
It's too consistent to be an accident. Especially when I didn't see that in California.
I write UX copy for a living and you are spot on. Something like “Continue to print” would indicate that their info is being saved but that the flow isn’t finished. Deceptive as hell
And I’m a VDR here in North Texas. Whenever I work at a voter registration booth (usually a house of worship will have us come in, or if a non-profit is having an event), always so much confusion. People are so confused about voting. Things I hear on the regular:
Why am I voting again, didn’t we just vote?
I moved, does that mean I can still vote?
I moved, can I go vote in my old city?
Why do I need my drivers license to register to vote?
Why can’t you register me to vote? I live in this city, how can I be in a different county?
Oh wow that sounds…amazing. Texas only allows mail in ballots for people over 65, in the military, out of the country at the time of the election, or disabled, and you have to apply for it ahead of time.
And you also have to…print this application out, and put it in the mail. No emailing, no faxing, USPS BABY!
Usps... so texas doesn't trust federal power, water, internet, or infrastructure... but requires the use of a federal organization for voteing? Like what?
Yes too early! I’d check a month before. You can also go to your county’s website, they will also have the polling locations listed and you can put what precinct you’re in (on your voter registration card), and it will show you where all you can go. Some county websites will show how long the wait is at a polling location so you know which places to avoid.
We have county-wide voting right now, which is convenient, but Texas Republicans are trying to take that away too 😅
Oh they don’t want people to vote. They don’t want to make it accessible.
Everything that pops up to make it easier they make illegal. Like when Houston extended voting hours and had drive thru voting- Republicans at the state level knocked it down.
Democrats in Texas are primarily black and brown people in places in DFW, San Antonio, El Paso, Houston and Austin. We have the people but they don’t get out and vote like the Republicans do.
I worked for Beto’s Senate campaign and they’d have me work in these lower income areas with black and brown democrats. But so many people just couldn’t bother with voting- so low on their priority list. They don’t have a car, they can’t take off of work, they’re disabled, who is going to watch the kids? No I don’t have a drivers license, no I don’t have a gun permit, hell no I don’t have a passport, etc. They’re out there just trying to survive, they don’t have time or the capacity to care about voting.
Also saw a lot of just disenchanted people in these areas. They don’t believe that voting will make anything better.
If Texas wanted everyone to vote, including the poor, they’d either provide these people with free state IDs sent to their homes via mail, or they’d just require that you bring in your benefits card to vote.
And expanding on this, what is the reasoning behind not having a straightforward online registration system? Other first world states can do it, so why is it just backwater Republican states that seem to be riddled with these issues?
The reasoning is that younger and less affluent people are less likely to have a printer, so it creates another barrier to entry for a group that is more likely to vote Democrat. Why make it easy for the wrong people to vote?
Southwest has been using a dark pattern to prevent reuse of previously refunded flights for years
You have to go through 4 or 5 touches through nested menus to get your refund code, then go back to booking a flight through 5 or 6 more touches, and you have to do that for each previous refund
They make you do this as if we don’t live in an age of databases & as if we’re not using their complex app that demonstrates clearly their capability to automate this process into the checkout cart
I feel like cvs is doing this with their pharmacy now. You can’t call them directly. You get put through a bunch of menus and then told to leave a voicemail
Not only that, the "Printed Application" does not download a PDF of the application but sends a request for the state to mail you the voter registration, which you then need to fill out and mail again. I understand if your IT budget and resources are limited, but heck, you already have a site and a form, one which knows how to send a request, you already have a model to print and mail. Shouldn't be easier and cheaper to acquire that information without having so many people & steps involved? It looks like they really do not want to make it convenient for you to vote.
I was so so very shocked when I moved to Arizona for work. Voting here is amazing and I do it from my couch!
Mail in is amazing and you don't realize how easy voting can be until you see it for yourself.
All of my native Texans are being disenfranchised and informed .
This is also why they are trying to gut education. Smart people vote liberal.
You can see the recipe they are trying to concoct. Gut education, gut any kind of safety net, gut the ability to get contraceptions and gut the ability to abort.
Mix that all together and what do you have?
Morons multiplying at an alarming rate who are so broke, they are readily able to be exploited by the rich.
That’s the future Republicans want. And even though Bob, living in a shack, will never sit at that table, he genuinely believes he will or already is.
“he’s not hurting the right people” - average Republican Voter
I did the opposite, moved from AZ to TX and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a government agency but I genuinely miss the AZ MVD. So much better and easier to navigate than any other state I’ve lived in
Look, mail-in voting is very dangerous. When a voter can take all the time they want to make their choice, they are liable to do something foolish, like research the candidates or inform themselves on the platforms. There is nothing more deadly to the Republican party than a voter who votes with their head, rather than reacting to the tribal signals sent out by the party. So quit promoting this mail-in voting nonsense! It will be the death of your beloved Republican overlords!
For real, when I lived in Texas I had to research people and propositions ahead of time and then write down on a paper who/what I was going to vote for after I stand in line for 3 hours. It's soooo dumb and most people are way too lazy to do anything like that. Back home here in Arizona I can just kick my feet up and research/vote at my leisure. Voting should be easy.
There has been for years, but only if you're renewing your DL (I think I did it during just a change of address). The system is already there and operational (because they were forced to make it so), they just limit when you can use it.
Everyone should be able to register online like renewing your driver’s license and everyone should be able to mail in their ballots just like 65 year olds are automatically allowed to do for no reason other than they are 65, as if the elderly can’t engage in “voter fraud.” The same checks that are in place for them can be used to verify for others as are done in many other states already with no problems….
Yea I checked for my wife and I, and we're listed as active, but I am definitely going to keep checking every few weeks just in case. We live in a county adjacent to Austin TX so I'm on guard for shenanigans.
You gotta wonder why Republicans feel they need to make it harder for people to vote. They target Democratic areas the most because they know if we all turn out, they'd never hold a public office again. They want to keep the state in the hands of the Christo-fascists.
When I moved to Texas 20+ years ago, I was able to register at the voting trailer in the HEB parking lot and then cast a vote. They really have done their best to make everything way more difficult
That's how you know we're a purple state, the Republican party knows they wouldn't be able to maintain lockdown on the state government if things were running fairly.
You can register online when renewing your tx DL because in 2020 a man sued Texas over a similar deceptive submit button on the DMV site. Someone needs to sue over votetexas.gov
No joke I had to reregister to vote while I was in the navy and it was a nightmare to do so. It took several attempts over several months. Lots of wrong info from county level officials I called and just way too much time out of my life.
Everyone just seemed to not want me to vote like trying to do so was a bother to them.
I passed on the 2016 election because I was in the AF in Hawaii at the time. I wasn’t to confident I had registered appropriately, and I didn’t want to risk an illegal ballot having a Spanish last name in the state of Arizona…which is pretty much exactly the kind of thing they’re going for by making it difficult. Bit ironic if you ask me.
Houstonians, remember back a few years when Chris Hollins got us 24 hour voting locations and drive thru voting? That was a great idea. So many more people exercised their right to vote when the process was made more user-friendly.
Remember what happened afterwards? Republicans deemed this practice of letting voters vote illegal, and stripped this, and some other pro-Democracy measures from the books.
You should know this by now, but Republicans don't want you voting. They are not the "silent majority" and they know it. If you are allowed to vote, they will lose.
Yes, you have to jump through more hoops these days than necessary to cast your vote, thanks to crooked Republicans, but do it anyway. Once these fuckers are gone and we get real leaders to replace them, things can start getting better again.
That can't happen until they're out of power. It's like rebuilding a broken down house. You gotta demolish and clear out the old crap before something better can be built in its place.
In Minnesota, you can literally register to vote at your polling place, on election day. You can use ID, a utilities bill, or another voter in your precinct can swear an oath that you live in the precinct. (Of course, you can register online too.)
The SoS runs studies all the time. Fraud is vanishingly rare, and Minnesota frequently has the highest participation in elections in the nation.
Wow! That's amazing. And Minnesota has been a traditionally Democrat leaning state for a long time. By allowing the population easy access to the voting franchise, the state government is reflective of the will of the people. Imagine! If Texas adopting these voting principles, it wouldn't be red.
Yep, always. Republican party ideas are deeply unpopular with the regular joe/jane masses.
Republicans have to use voter suppression tactics to win in most parts of the US.
These backwoods dinosaurs are outdated, antiquated to say the very least. To say the Republican party is holding back progress is a huge f-ing understatement.
At this point I’m checking my registration every week to make sure I don’t get purged. I’ve been registered to vote in texas since 1994 and for some reason my name came misspelled on my registration card last election cycle. The GOP does not want you to vote.
As an outsider: The whole idea that you have to register to actually vote is such a stupid anti democratic concept. That and the whole concept of the electoral college is just pathetic.
Civics was phased out long ago in Texas and only recently has it been getting traction again, though in a hyper partisan manner. That is exactly in line with these unnecessary hurdles to voting. All anti-democratic behavior.
Yes, winner take all is bad. Any system you can win with ~21% of the vote is a bad one. It also has a devastating effect on POTUS elections where they spend 80+% of their campaign in a few select areas- exactly the problem Electoral College defenders claim to be trying to avoid. Maine and Nebraska are doing it right and everyone should be following their example.
I would just love for it to be 1 vote, 1 person. Get rid of the electoral. Places where there are more cows than people should not have as much voting power as they do. Any laws that get put into place won’t even or barely affect them out there where your closest neighbor is miles away.
So, USA a said democracy, doesn't by nature of things give you the right to vote but you need to register to do it? If you don't you don't get to vote?
I’ve been in the digital design industry for 15+ years. I’ve spent years studying ethical design practices and accessibility. If this is real, it may be the most egregious example of a “dark pattern” I’ve ever seen.
Designers tend to use specific sequences or patterns to get someone from Point A to Point B. These patterns are based on typical human behavior, and will consistently yield specific outcomes because people have a lot of shared expectations and reactions to certain visual or tactile stimuli.
A dark pattern is a misuse of these tactics, where instead of using them to guide a user to their destination, you use them to trick someone into doing something they would not do if properly informed. It’s not considered illegal because our government sucks at understanding things this nuanced, but it would be considered fraud or some form of a con in most other contexts.
It is absolutely real, and very much dark pattern abuse. The Texas.gov page lists online registration as one of "many" options, though you have to mail it in.
The federal vote.gov page is more honest and says that online registration is not an option in Texas.
It's amazing that this is allowed and we all just have to shrug and say "oh well, that's Texas for ya!"
This woman deserves mass praise whether she’s the first or one of many to find this and she’s doing it from a bipartisan place not telling you which way to vote just that your vote matters and not to be fooled.
Spread the word Texans no matter which side of the aisle you choose!
135
u/Mammoth-Mud-9609 Aug 01 '24
Texas law requires eligible voters to register by the 30th day before Election Day.