AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Monday, Jan. 31 is the last day to register to vote in Texas. It’s also the same day the Texas Department of Information Resources launched an app that will allow Texans to create an account to keep track of different government-issued IDs, including licenses and registrations.
“We’re launching a digital assistant that’s called Texas by Texas or TXT for short. And it’s going to allow Texans to create an online account where they can manage multiple different government services through the ease, security and convenience of one application on any device anywhere and at anytime,” TDIR’s chief information officer and executive director, Amanda Crawford, said Monday.
“Texans can use TXT to officially renew or replace their driver’s license, or their state ID and renew their vehicle registration. Or if you happen to be a massage therapist or a massage instructor, you can also renew those two occupational licenses. And as time progresses, we’re going to be able to add more and more constituent facing services to TXT,” Crawford said.
But those services won’t include online voter registration any time soon, because the state legislature has not yet passed a law that would allow it.
“That would be a policy call for the legislature. But we stand ready with Texas by Texas to be able to put whatever constituent-facing services the legislature or state agencies decided to move online and make digital,” Crawford said.
Currently, already-registered voters in Texas are able to update their address online, but new voters must still fill out voter registration forms on paper.
“Everybody who’s a new voter must actually fill out a paper registration and sign their names with what’s called a wet signature,” President of the League of Women Voters Grace Chimene said Monday.
Earlier this month, the Secretary of State’s Office said it ran into a paper supply chain issue and told the League of Women Voters it would only be able to fulfill a quarter of the nonprofit’s request for voter registration cards.
“They told us we’d have to print our own. And that’s a huge expense for our organization,” Chimene explained.
Days later, the state was able to fulfill the entire order from LWV. But, Chimene said that could have been avoided altogether if there was an online version she could have pushed new voters to.
“Forty-two other states have online voter registration, and Texas still does not. We do have the technology. We just don’t have the will in the legislature to pass this very needed update to our voter registration process,” Chimene continued.
James Henson with the Texas Politics Project said on average, Texans approve of online registration.
“Democrats, and, to a lesser extent, independents are largely for it, and Republicans are increasingly evenly split,” Henson said.
He said with a Republican-led legislature, it’s unlikely the state will pass its own online registration law any time soon.
“All elements of the voting process have become more contentious and public opinion divided among partisan lines, you increasingly see more Republican skepticism,” Henson said, pointing to hefty voting legislation championed by Republican lawmakers last year.
“On one hand, it’s the increasingly politically loaded nature of rules, regulating voting and the idea that making it easier to vote is somehow always an opportunity for increased corruption and fraud, despite the fact that there’s not much evidence of that at all,” Henson explained.
“On the other hand, in conflict with people’s basic desire for convenience, I think it’s one of the most interesting things about the results we see when you ask people about online voter registration, is I think a lot of people’s first impulse is not ideological, it’s about convenience,” Henson said, pointing to a Texas Politics Project poll ahead of the 2020 election.
Henson said new laws at the federal level could be the only way Texans see online voter registration any time soon.
“If you’re going to see any chance at all, it’s going to have to be something coming out of the Democratic majorities in Washington right now,” Henson said.
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