My State Rep., Carol Alvarado, would like for you to be able to register to vote online.
Rep. Carol Alvarado
Can I just state the obvious? Why can’t we register to vote online?
I manage my banking online, I do my taxes online, I can even buy and sell stock online; so why can’t I register to vote online? A 2014 survey of registered voters in Texas by the Pew Charitable Trust indicated that 34 percent mistakenly believed that online voter registration was already available. Georgia, Indiana, Arizona and Louisiana are just a few examples of the 20 states that have enacted legislation to modernize the way they register voters by offering an online application to register to vote.
In the social media era, it is hard to wrap my mind around why the movement to modernize the electoral process in Texas is moving at a snail’s pace. Which is why I have filed HB 953 this session to bring Texas into the modern era by allowing voters to register online.
Currently, to register to vote, one could find the time in their day to visit certain designated government offices to fill out a paper application. One could also download an application from the website of the Secretary of State, fill it out, print it out, and send your application through the mail. This feature is a step in the right direction but it requires readily available printing and postage. In such a digital world the current process is not only outdated, but inconvenient for the voters of today.
It’s not difficult to see why we had such a dismal 24.99 percent turnout of Texas’ voting age population in the latest mid-term election.
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Arizona was one of the first states to transition to online voter registration. Officials in their largest county have reported the cost of a single registration dropped from 83 cents per card to 3 cents per card.
Allow me to put these figures into a Texas perspective. According to the Texas Secretary of State, at the time of the 2014 General Election, just over 14 million Texans were registered to vote. Using the Arizona estimate of 83 cents per card and assuming each registrant used the paper method, that would amount to a total cost of $11,641,116. Using the .03 estimate, that figure would plummet to $420,763.
I may not be a certified accountant, but if I could save the taxpayers over $11 million, I would make every effort to do so and be happy to take the credit.
Here’s HB953, which you will note includes Republican Rep. Patricia Harless as a coauthor. There were two bills that attempted to do the same thing in 2013. The good news is that SB315 from 2013, for which Rep. Alvarado was a sponsor in the House, passed the Senate and made it out of the House Elections Committee, but ran out of time before it could get a vote in the lower chamber. The bad news is that four Senators who voted for it (the bill passed by a 21-10 margin) are no longer there, and two of them (Sens. John Carona and Wendy Davis) were succeeded by people who (to me at least) seem less likely to vote for something like this. I could be wrong, so don’t give up hope. Honestly, I’m not even sure what the argument against doing voter registration online is. You have to think that one of these days we’re going to be voting online, perhaps via our own handheld devices or whatever comes next to replace them. It would be strange if at that time we’re still chained to paper and snail mail or fax machines for registration purposes, wouldn’t it?
I also think online voter registration would be a move in the right direction, but the Harris County GOP recently opposed this largely based on security concerns, worries that there would not be a signature on file against which to compare mail ballots, worries that the system might be hacked, or the county offices flooded with fraudulent or duplicate registrations. County Tax Assessor/Voter Registrar Mike Sullivan was said to oppose the online registration proposal, and may have more technical or staffing concerns about which I am not fully informed.