TCRP report on Texas election administration problems

From the inbox:

Today the Texas Civil Rights Project (“TCRP”) released a report—utilizing data from the largest non-partisan Election Protection effort in the state, provisional ballot data, as well as publicly available information—to analyze the the long-standing failures in Texas election administration infrastructure.

According to the report, Texas Election Protection 2018: How Election Administration Failures Impacted Hundreds of Thousands of Voters, election administration issues impacted, at a minimum, 277,628 voters — a number higher than the margin of victory in Texas’ closely watched Senate race.

“Across Texas, the 2018 election brought a surge of civic engagement energy. We saw record-breaking voter registration and turnout rates in almost every county. Unfortunately, Texas’ election administration did not keep up with voters,” said Emily Eby, report author and staff attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “Through our Election Protection efforts, we heard directly from voters about the problems they encountered in the voting booth due to the state’s unwillingness to bring our democracy into the 21st Century. There is an urgent need for Texas to reform its antiquated election infrastructure immediately and this report sheds light on how many voters were harmed by the state’s election administration failures.”

The 2018 general election saw a wave of renewed civic engagement and democratic participation that swept across the state. Voter registration surged to 79.36% of the citizen voting age population, the highest percentage in Texas since the 2004 presidential election. Of those registered in Texas, 53% turned out to vote (up 20% from the 2014 midterms and the highest in a Texas midterm election since 1970). Despite this renewed wave of civic engagement, Texas’ election administration failed voters.

Findings from the report revealed:

  • Late poll openings, including at least 1,512 voters who had their voting rights curtailed by late openings in Harris County alone.

  • Long lines at polling places, including a three-hour wait time in a polling location in Corpus Christi during Early Voting.

  • At least 262,647 eligible college students lacked an accessible place to vote on their college campuses.

  • Early registration deadlines, overwhelming county administrators who had to process all of the paper applications one-by-one.

  • Noncompliance with federal voting rights laws, including at least 753 voters who were disenfranchised because Texas refuses to comply with the National Voter Registration Act.

  • Provisional ballot problems, including at least 10,831 eligible voters who cast ballots that did not count simply because the voter was in the wrong place on Election Day.

  • Voter intimidation, such as when Alan Vera, a Harris County resident, allegedly attempted to disenfranchise some of his fellow Houstonians by delivering over 4,000 voter challenges to the voter registrar’s office.

  • Voting machine malfunctions, such as the Hart eSlate voting machine malfunction that switched straight-party votes in the Texas Senate race. At least 1,885,066 voters were susceptible to the Hart eSlate machine error.

In addition to highlighting the issues in Texas’ election administration infrastructure, the report recommends key solutions for local, state, and federal policy makers to address the systemic failures before the 2020 election — when voter registration and turnout are expected to reach record levels once again.

The landing page with another summary of the report is here, and the full report is here. Some of the Harris County problems will be ameliorated by the election of Diane Trautman, like when and how long polling places are open. Some issues, like college campus voting locations, are only now getting visibility and can be worked on locally, as was the case last year in Prairie View. Some issues, like expanded voter registration, will require legislative fixes, which very likely means a Democratic takeover of state government; there may be a bipartisan bill in the House for same day registration, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which Dan Patrick or Greg Abbott let such a thing become law. It all starts with winning more elections. The Chron has more.

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One Response to TCRP report on Texas election administration problems

  1. Manny says:

    The number of people that are supporting the racist Trump/Republican party is going down, the corrupt Republicans can only maintain power by disfranchising voters.

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