The Democratic Senators from Harris County write a letter to County Clerk Stan Stanart.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Three Houston state senators are asking Harris County officials to emulate Dallas County’s voter outreach efforts tied to Texas’ new voter identification law.
State Sens. Rodney Ellis, Sylvia Garcia and John Whitmire — all Democrats — wrote a letter on Monday to Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, asking him to reach out to voters to “minimize any issues voters may encounter at the polls” because of the ID law.
The senators offered an example by pointing to Dallas County, which last month sent 195,000 notices to voters to alert them about the law’s provision that a voter’s name on a valid photo ID must exactly match the name listed in the voter registration database.
“With a county as large as Harris County, there is no reason why we should not be able to take the same proactive measures to ensure that our constituents’ constitutional right to vote is adequately protected,” wrote the senators, who made a similar request last year.
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In Dallas County, it has taken elections officials several months to comb through databases and flag voters who might have problems. And it’s going to take officials a few more months to complete the additional outreach approved by county commissioners.
But in Harris County, the senators said they were hopeful something still could be done there before the March primary.
“Time is of the essence as the March primaries are fast approaching and high voter turnout is anticipated,” the senators wrote.
You can see the letter at the link above. Dallas County has already spent a bunch of money on voter outreach. I don’t know how much Harris County has spent, but I’ll bet it’s nowhere near that much. We already know that Harris County has had issues with how the law has been enforced, and that was in a low turnout odd year election. Surely we’d like to improve that experience and minimize inconvenience and wait times for voters, right? Houston Politics has more.
A voter’s name on their photo ID does NOT have to perfectly match the name on their voter registration card in order to vote! If it doesn’t perfectly match, (but is similar) the voter simply initials a little box (known as the affidavit). Why are the Democrats trying to disenfranchise voters by telling them their names must perfectly match or they won’t be able to vote?? The State Representative for our neighborhood came to our Civic Club meeting and told our residents that they wouldn’t be able to vote if their names didn’t perfectly match. My husband, who is on our Civic Club board and is also an election judge, had to call him out on it. Fear mongering is not helpful in getting out the vote, and the Democrats certainly appear to be doing just that.