Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Engage Texas, the massive Republican super PAC focused on voter registration, is shutting down, citing challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic.
The group began last year with the support of some of the biggest Texas GOP donors and raised $12.7 million while building a staff in the hundreds. Yet the group says that the months-long pandemic has made clear that “person-to-person contact voter registration is going to be challenging for an indeterminate amount of time.”
“Leadership has determined that the highest and best use of supporter and donor energies at this point is to phase out person-to-person voter registration, close Engage Texas and encourage our supporters to engage with candidate and party activities ahead of the November election,” Engage Texas said in a statement to The Texas Tribune on Friday. “Engage Texas is proud of our highly successful voter registration efforts and believes that conservative voter registration will successfully continue through the Republican Party of Texas Volunteer Engagement Project.”
Engage Texas, which had $6 million cash on hand at the end of March, is in the process of redistributing its remaining funds to other GOP groups with similar goals. The reallocations are expected to be detailed on its next quarterly report to the Federal Election Commission, which is due July 15.
The shuttering of Engage Texas leaves the Texas GOP’s Volunteer Engagement Project as Republicans’ chief registration effort this election cycle at the state level. The project is aiming to register 100,000 likely Republicans by Oct. 5, the registration deadline for the November election. Party chairman James Dickey said Thursday the project has surpassed 85,000 registrations.
“Republicans are finally paying major attention again to voter registration,” Dickey said during a tele-town hall about the party’s 2020 convention. “It’s back in our DNA, and we are ceding no turf.”
Still, the shutdown of Engage Texas is a major blow to one of the lessons that state Republicans took from their setbacks in the 2018 election — that they needed to grow their pool of voters and hone in on registration after years of neglect.
[…]
In shutting down, Engage Texas pointed to data that it said showed that for the first time in a decade, “Republican registrations have outpaced Democrat registrations in Texas, and have done so for nine consecutive months.” As of today, the group said, Republicans have registered 18,677 more new voters this year in Texas than Democrats have.
I would not take their claims very seriously. I’m sure they registered some voters, but without knowing their exact metrics it’s hard to take any such claims, especially such specific claims, as anything more than self-aggrandizement. (How would they know how many voters Democratic-aligned organizations have registered, for example?) I would also note that if this mission was that critical, this would be a funny time to abandon it. I’m sure the rest of that money will go to only the most deserving consultants and operatives. See you on the other side, Engage Texas.
I am confused.
Texas has re-opened…Gov Abbott said so.
Couldn’t Engage Texas just set up in a public space and wave Confederate flags around while holding long guns to attract their targeted voters in order to register them?
Such conflicting messages coming from the GOP.
I think this was a problem of throwing money at something thinking that people would just show up.
Pretty much every single source of new voters leans heavily Democrat in Texas.
They sent me a mailer even though I have been registered for 40 years and vote every election, and they tried to engage with me when I went to get my driver’s license renewed by appealing to my rights under the 2nd amendment to own a gun. With such an unfocused approach, I would be doubtful of claims that they added new GOP-leaning voters to the rolls.