
We Found a Way to Increase Voter Turnout in Texas, but Texas Isn’t Interested - diafygi
https://medium.com/s/story/texas-rejected-1000s-of-legally-submitted-voter-registration-forms-days-before-the-deadline-d4dbc7fa8504
======
nindalf
Disappointing. Democracy doesn't work if every voter doesn't get an
opportunity to vote. I guess the people who specialise in suppressing turnout
don't care.

The reluctance to let people register to vote is understandable, if your
allegiance is to your party before your country. I suppose they rationalise it
by convincing themselves that what's best for the country is for their party
to be elected, rather than a free and fair election. Or maybe they tell
themselves "I'm sure the other side uses similar tactics". Or maybe they just
don't care.

~~~
beagle3
Democracy doesn't work even when people get an opportunity to vote (unless the
vote is 2-options, one round): See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

But it works even worse if voters don't get to vote. True.

~~~
newtothebay
For readers who may encounter the Arrow's Impossibility Theorem for the first
time, its conclusion is shockingly true but also doesn't prescribe doom. There
are reasonable alternative voting systems that don't run into the same
"Impossibility" problem [https://ncase.me/ballot/](https://ncase.me/ballot/)

~~~
drdeca
Sure, they don't run up against /Arrow's/ impossibility theorem, but Gibbard's
1978 theorem shows that "Any straightforward game form (deterministic or not)
is a probability mixture of game forms each of which is either unilateral or
duple."

(For an explanation of what that means, see :
[https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/14245](https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/14245)
)

Edit: though, if I had to recommend one, I'd probably either recommend "ranked
pairs" or something exotic with a substantial deal of randomness.

Or, really, maybe I'd advocate that the primaries use ranked pairs, and that
the general use FPTP (or something very similar) because it is easier to
understand the mechanism, so easier for people to trust it / keep results seen
as legitimate, and because parties narrow down the options to 2 for the most
part anyway, and all the usual systems are the same once it gets down to two
candidates (in random ballot voting, it is still different though)

------
thebradbain
More interesting are the county responses:

Dallas County said it would follow the directive of the state and notify
affected senders that they need to mail in a signature (without needing to
resubmit entirely), even though they had already processed ~800 of the
registrations as valid.

Travis County (Austin) responded to the Secretary of State that no– these are
valid registrations, and counted them as such.

The bulk (>50%) of the registrations were in Austin, IIRC. Both of these
counties are liberal strongholds in Texas. If Beto manages to win against Cruz
by a margin of a couple thousand votes, I imagine the Cruz campaign will make
this a much bigger issue than it is (and, imo, deservedly gain the title of
trying to win by voter suppression).

[https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018-elections/2018/10/04/tr...](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018-elections/2018/10/04/travis-
county-going-secretary-state-says-will-accept-voter-registrations-filed-using-
online-tool)

~~~
wemdyjreichert
It could be an issue, though. By doing a partial roll-out, you're naturally
making it easier for some groups to register. This could be partisan, and it
could be innocent. But it might be best to avoid the appearance of
impropriety.

------
scottLobster
Sounds like they found a corrupt official. Is anyone planning a lawsuit? If
not I doubt a medium post is going to do the trick.

Seems a classic case of idealistic technologists running into squishy and yes,
sometimes corrupt human systems they aren't prepared for.

Not excusing the behavior of the official, but I really hope this goes further
than an angry blog post.

~~~
dj-wonk
The articles addresses this:

> Vote.org strongly disagrees with the Secretary of State and is exploring all
> avenues of recourse. We suggest that the Secretary of State implement Online
> Voter Registration, a common sense solution to increase voter registration
> rates while reducing costs. There are no downsides to online voter
> registration — unless, of course, your goal is to suppress voter turnout. We
> hope that this isn’t the case, and look forward to Texas joining the 38
> other states that have taken steps to secure and modernize their voter
> registration solutions. In the meantime, we will do everything in our power
> to increase voter turnout in Texas — including pursuing legal action, should
> it come to that.

~~~
masonic

      There are no downsides to online voter registration
    

... except that it makes it impossible to prosecute voter fraud.

~~~
CamTin
Why is that?

------
diafygi
Presidents can wet sign bills into laws using an autopen[1]. Would it be
possible to sign a form on your phone and have an autopen wet sign the form?

[1]:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/us/politics/28sign.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/us/politics/28sign.html)

------
twtw
Genuine question: with online voter registration, where is the check for voter
eligibility? Actually, when is this supposed to happen in any voter
registration? When I registered and voted in CA in 2016, I never had to
present any form of ID. Is this the intended system?

~~~
Gibbon1
> where is the check for voter eligibility?

Two things. In California they either mail you a ballot to your address. Or
you have to present as a warm body at your polling place.

Beyond that California's politicians unlike Republican controlled states have
no interest in preventing people from voting. For instance San Francisco
recently began registering non-citizens to vote for the city's school board.

~~~
masonic
How does mailing a ballot to an address "validate" that the person voting that
ballot is a citizen?

~~~
UncleMeat
That gets checked when you register.

------
b_tterc_p
Sending a photo of your signature so it can be transposed onto a document by a
third party without power of attorney doesn’t sound like a great idea to me.
Political motivations aside, I think I agree with Texas. This is a bad idea.

~~~
subway
Is it all that different from DocuSign's entire business model? I'm curious if
the state of Texas recognizes agreements signed via DocuSign.

~~~
chadcatlett
You can use DocuSign for agreements and the state will recognize them. There
are only a handful of exceptions where e-sign is not allowed in Texas.

In addition to business documents, I have used DocuSign to sign county and
state government documents in Texas.

------
crazygringo
> _Any reasonable voter would interpret “you can fax in your form and mail a
> copy” to mean that you can do precisely that._

True (and it should be obeyed as written)... but it's also hard to imagine the
purpose behind mailing. The fax is already a copy!

Every other circumstance where I've had to mail something in addition to
faxing/e-mailing it's _always_ been because the original signature was
required. Just using common sense, it wouldn't be surprising if the wording is
a mistake where "original" was intended. But hey, unless they fix it, they've
got to obey it, right?

------
AnonymousRider
Not surprising insofar as we Texans require a little thing called verified
identity to vote. I have heard that the majority of those registrations were
invalidated because they could not be matched to real people living in Texas
cities.

------
Fins
I dunno... It took me all of 15 minutes to get TX license _and_ voter
registration (too bad they do not share it across the board, and I am getting
bombarded with all those fake "surveys" about yet another stupid California
proposition XYZ). Granted, it was in a more civilized part of TX, but is there
really an actual problem with registering to vote?

And did anyone look at TX code to check that submissions from a third party
rather than the actual applicant are valid?

~~~
SamWhited
It's well-known that younger generations tend to put off or not do things if
they can't do it online. Also, not everyone has access to the same resources
you do. If you work 60 hours a week and don't have a car and it takes you an
hour by 3 buses to get o the nearest library or DMV, it's going to be hard to
get registered. Maybe you don't even have a drivers license and can't get one.
Maybe you don't know your social security number and haven't been able to get
access too it. There are any number of things that make this hard, just
because you're privileged enough not to have to deal with them doesn't mean
everyone else is.

~~~
justtopost
I am all for voter turnout, but chalking it up to millenials being too lazy to
register is pretty lame.

~~~
SamWhited
No one actually did this, you're focusing on the first sentence of a longer
reply. It doesn't "chaulk it up" to that at all.

