For the vast majority of Americans, registering to vote is easier than ordering food delivery from a phone app.
Not so in Texas, where, unlike 42 states and Washington, D.C., not all residents are offered the convenience. Instead, Texans must obtain a paper copy of the application and mail it in, happen across voter registrars who get them signed up, or are lucky enough to be registered by volunteers with the League of Women Voters at a naturalization ceremony when they become new U.S. citizens.
Online voter registration bills
As online voter registration has become the norm across the country, it appears to have become more controversial in Texas, not less.
There is one exception: a federal judge in 2020 forced Texas to allow online voter registration when residents renew or update their driver licenses using the Texas Department of Public Safety website, after ruling the state was violating federal law. In the first year and a half of the program, 1.5 million residents used that option, according to state data.
With the Texas Legislature set to reconvene in January, multiple lawmakers, including state Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat, have filed bills to create a statewide online voter registration system for all eligible voters, not just those updating driver license paperwork.
The legislation is nothing new — Alvarado and others have been proposing the bill for a decade — but it remains unclear whether state leadership will consider it.
The Texas House passed a bill in 2011 creating online voter registration, with only one member voting against it. However, the bill died when a Senate committee did not take it up.
A similar bipartisan bill in 2015 was co-authored by 76 House members, indicating a majority of the House would have voted for the measure had it been brought to a vote. It was quashed when the Harris County Clerk and the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector's offices rallied opposition, arguing it would make Texas more vulnerable to voter fraud. At the time, both of those elected offices were run by Republicans but since have flipped to Democrats.
VOTER TURNOUT: 75% of Texas voters under age 30 skipped the midterm elections. But why?
Neither the House nor Senate has held a hearing on online voter registration since the bill was scuttled in 2015.
Florida debated online voter registration that same year but reached a different conclusion, with then-Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, signing the measure into law after it passed both chambers overwhelmingly.
"Unfortunately, it's been a partisan issue here," Alvarado said. "My friends on the other side of the aisle have not been open to it. We came close in 2015, and we fell short. I was in the House at the time. I had several Republicans that were on board, some that were my joint authors on the bill. But most of them aren't even around anymore."
In 2021, during a long, fraught year of debating voter fraud, the legislature convened four times, but the security of the newly-created DPS online voter registration was not among either party's concerns, Alvarado said.
"We haven't heard of any reports from the Secretary of State that the system was being abused or fraudulent, anything like that," Alvarado said. "So, why not just expand it? We've got it partially. But again, that's because we were forced to do it."
Online voter registration is more cost-effective
Online voter registration also is more cost-effective than a paper system, allowing counties to dramatically reduce administrative expenses and hire fewer temporary workers, Alvarado said.
In Arizona, a state that voted more than 20 years ago to create online voter registration, the cost of processing a voter registration application decreased from 83 cents per registration to only 3 cents, according to a 2010 report.
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican and former Harris County tax assessor-collector who oversaw voter registration for a decade until 2008, is one of those who opposed online voter registration when it last was up for debate.
Now, he questions whether the legislation is necessary since the DPS system has already in place.
TIMELINE: A decade of voter restrictions in Texas
"The question is, is this a distinction without a difference? What are really the numbers in the Department of Public Safety's online registration and what does that mean? What are the actual statistics behind it?" Bettencourt said. "Once I get all that information, I'll be able to make a definitive public statement about where to go next. We have a version of online registration right now. So, for me the thing to do is, let's study and get the facts and see what's happened with online registration through driver's license renewals."
Hani Mirza, legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project's voting rights program, was part of the legal team that forced the state to create a system in 2020.
While the current process is serving many Texans, Mirza said online voter registration should be expanded to reach all eligible voters in the state.
"We have online voter registration for certain people going through a certain transaction," Mirza said. "Our lawsuit made it clear that the state has the ability to create a safe, secure system to provide online voter registration, because they're already doing it for voters who update their driver's license address or renew their driver's license."
The existing system excludes those who do not have a driver's license or are applying for a new one, such as residents who recently have moved to Texas.
"We need a system that will capture everybody and make it easy for everybody to register to vote," Mirza said, "And it shouldn't be tied to some other transaction."
Paper registration limits voters
Mirza suggested the state's continued reliance on an "archaic" paper-based voter registration system is intended to reduce the number of voters who participate in elections.
"That's what I think is the reason why we haven't updated the system," Mirza said. "Because it doesn't really make any sense when it comes to costs, when it comes to efficiency. It makes no sense at all. We've been able to make so many other processes within Texas online-based. For some reason, voter registration is still paper-based. I think really voter suppression is the main reason why that's still the case."
In the Nov. 8 election, Texas tied with Kentucky in ranking 42nd out of 50 states for voter turnout, according to preliminary data from the University of Florida's U.S. Elections Project.
About 42.5 percent of eligible Texas voters participated, compared to states such as Maine, Oregon and Minnesota that topped the list with around 60 percent turnout.
Oregon and Minnesota have offered online voter registration for more than eight years, while Maine currently is implementing a system after passing legislation in 2021, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declined to comment on their positions.
State lawmakers will convene in Austin for the upcoming session of the Texas legislature beginning Jan. 10.
Read more