Texas Democrats plan to create a voter registration army - via Zoom

(Guardian UK) Texas Democrats plan to use Zoom to create an army of voter registration volunteers, a novel approach to work around the state’s severe restrictions on voter registration during the Covid-19 pandemic. The effort comes as voter registration efforts, both in Texas and around the US have effectively stalled just months before the presidential election.

Texas makes it extremely difficult to conduct voter registration drives, even outside of the pandemic. The state requires anyone who wants to do so to become a volunteer deputy registrar, a process that requires going to a county-run training. Only Texas residents who are eligible to vote in the state can get the certification. Texas has 254 counties, but someone can only legally register voters in the county in which they are deputized and their certification expires at the end of every even-numbered year.

Some states place no restrictions on voter registration drives at all, while others have more modest ones in place like requiring groups to register with the state before they begin their drive. Civil rights groups have long called the Texas requirement a form of voter suppression.

“Texas has some of the strictest voter registration laws in the country,” said Beth Stevens, voting rights legal director at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “In Texas, volunteer deputy registrars can be criminally prosecuted for what most of us would consider administrative errors while they’re registering people.” ...............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/03/texas-voter-registration-zoom-army-volunteers