Alas.
Still the only voter ID anyone should need
A group of Harris County officials have succeeded in scuttling a bipartisan bill that would have made Texas the 27th state to let citizens register to vote online.
The proposal was co-sponsored by a majority of the House, but stalled in the chamber’s Elections Committee after 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, even with the state’s controversial voter ID law.
Rep. Celia Israel, who sponsored the measure as a way to boost voter turnout and save the state millions of dollars, pronounced it dead Friday afternoon.
“Texas wants this. The majority of the people on this floor want this,” said Israel, D-Austin, gesturing to her colleagues. “But I can’t get it out of committee because of some partisan election officers from Harris County.”
[…]
Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Mike Sullivan, a Republican whose job includes being the county voter registrar, denied that politics played any role in his position. He also denied that officials had organized a unified effort to derail the bill.
“Our state is not ready,” Sullivan said, arguing he had seen glitches from time to time in voter data that made him believe his office was not prepared to integrate information from the Texas Secretary of State and the Department of Public Safety into an electronic system.
Even a small risk of making it easier for fraudsters to falsely register to vote or steal information, or of software being compromised, is not worth the convenience for the few people that would sign up online, he said.
“I have a sworn duty to maintain the integrity of the voter roll,” Sullivan said. “I’ve sworn to do it. I campaigned to do it.”
National groups that have monitored the implementation of online voter registration in other states have dismissed the concerns as unfounded.
“No state with online voter registration has reported fraudulent activity or security breaches occurring through their systems,” according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.
Online systems actually reduce fraud, according to the report, by virtually eliminating errors due to poor handwriting and other flaws of paper systems.
See here and here for the background. I don’t get this at all, and based on the reporting I’ve seen the objections seem a lot like foot-dragging to me. But perhaps there is a way to shed some light on this.
Sullivan, who said he opposed a similar measure last session, could see himself supporting online voter registration if his questions about voter data are addressed.
“I consider myself open to new technology, I consider myself open to new ways of doing business,” he said Saturday. “It would be a mischaracterization to say that I am forever opposed to online voter registration.”
I would have expected Mike Sullivan to be open to new technology, so I was disappointed to see that he opposed this bill. I wanted to understand why he took this position, so I emailed him to ask about it. He respectfully declined to comment, however, so for now at least we are left with speculation. Whatever the basis for this is, I hope we can get past it next time.
“not worth the convenience for the few people that would sign up online”.
An asinine statement by the voter registrar.
Interestingly he states that the state of Texas is not ready. Or is really that the state is not prepared to make the effort? This sounds like an indictment of the way things have been run for the last +20 years. Which party has been running the show during that time frame?
Disappointing that he won’t even suggest moving forward on how to improve his office and the state to prepare for what will eventually happen.