Register to Vote

Commentary always votes. Always. Plus, I have been living in the same place, like forever. Forever.

I can’t imagine being informed that my voter registration was no longer valid.

I don’t even remember when I first filled out my voter registration application. I guess the county must still have it on file. I guess.

We all know that Texas is one of about seven states without online voter registration. Can you believe that? We live an online life. We shop online. We pay bills online. We can file our taxes online. We can apply for loans online. We can transfer kazillions of dollars online. We bank online. We conduct major transactions online. We can sign documents online. We can’t register to vote online.

It got me to thinking. If you are not registered to vote and want to register you have to go online and find a Texas voter registration application. You have to fill it out, print it, sign it, put it in an envelope, stick a stamp on it, and then take it to a USPS mailbox – usually at a post office. If you happen to find a Texas Secretary of State or county official voter registration application, the postage is paid for as in the featured photo.

Where does one find a hard copy application? Here is from the Texas Secretary of State:

Post offices, libraries, Texas Department of Public Safety offices, and Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Here is from the Harris County Tax Assessor Collector:

You can pick-up an application at your local U.S. Postal office, library, high school, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) site, Texas Health and Human Services Commission and other government offices.

If you have not figured it out by now, registering to vote in Texas is a challenge. How many folks have printers at home. How many have envelopes. How many have stamps. Who goes to the post office these days.

We are supposed to be a country that encourages voter participation and voter engagement. Nope. Not in Texas.

See this from the Trib:

Bexar County officials moved forward Tuesday with a plan to mail county residents voter registration forms, defying Attorney General Ken Paxton’s threat to use “all available legal means” to quash the effort.

The 3-1 Commissioners Court vote escalates a brewing fight between Texas Republicans and some of the state’s largest counties over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders are weighing a similar plan, and Paxton warned the two counties against such efforts Monday evening, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls.

Rebuffing those claims, Bexar County Commissioners Court approved a $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions following three hours of fervent discussion at Tuesday’s court meeting. Local GOP activists spent more than an hour blasting the deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money and insisting it would be used to disproportionately register Democrats, citing past comments from the firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

Democratic commissioners, backed by a county legal official, said Paxton’s legal threats were misleading and unfounded. And the firm’s chief executive said the outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan — a requirement of the contract, he said — and pose little risk of registering noncitizens.

“I have a personal view on who I would like to win the federal election. That is not to say that the contracts that we undertake with governments are in any way partisan,” said Jeremy Smith, CEO of Civic Government Solutions.

He noted the company uses a mix of public records and county data to identify people who could have recently moved and are unregistered, with a contractual obligation to contact “every eligible person who arises in any of those datasets.”

The court’s approval of the outreach contract came less than 24 hours after Paxton sent a letter to Bexar County commissioners warning the deal was illegal because the county “can take no action without a grant of legal authority,” and Texas law does not explicitly allow counties to mail out unsolicited registration forms.

Paxton cited his office’s successful effort in 2020 to block Harris County from sending unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots to every registered voter in that county.

“Because the same can be said for mass mailings of voter registration applications, I am confident the courts will agree with me that your proposal exceeds your authority,” Paxton wrote in his letters to Bexar and Harris counties.

Here is the entire Trib read: Bexar County OKs voter registration outreach, defying Paxton | The Texas Tribune.

Sigh. Send non-registered folks an application and all they do is fill it out, sign, and send it back in. Nope. The GOP is not interested in getting more folks on the voter rolls. Pretty simple.

The GOP led State of Texas makes it hard to participate and vote. Democratic led counties should make it easy. Nothing wrong with that.

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Commentary is a fan of actor Amy Adams. “Arrival,” “The Fighter,” “Trouble with the Curve,” and “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” are among my favorite Adams flicks. You know what Amy Adams has in common with acting greats Peter O’Toole, Glenn Close, Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, and Thelma Ritter? All have six or more Oscar acting nominations without an Oscar win. I just saw an Amy Adams trailer for the upcoming flick titled “Nightbitch” and I couldn’t finish watching it. It made me feel uncomfortable. It is about a woman who thinks she is turning into a dog. I am pretty sure we will be hearing some more about this flick.

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We didn’t play yesterday but still extended our AL West lead to 6 ½ games. We continue our series against the Reds this evening. 24 games remain on the regular season schedule.