Nancy Lubar collects registration cards during a class for deputy registrars.
Staff/File photo
Voter registration is a mess in Texas
Our clunky, archaic, expensive registration system is a form of voter suppression, Sophia Dembling says
VIEWPOINTS

Oct. 9 was the last day to register to vote in time for the upcoming midterm elections. As a volunteer deputy registrar, I spent it slogging through toad ¬strangling downpours, knocking on apartment doors, and registering every last voter I could find.

While this was deeply satisfying in terms of connecting with voters, it was not exactly efficient. Nothing about voter registration in Texas is.

Across the state for the past several months, armies of volunteer deputy registrars have been in high schools and colleges, bars and restaurants, at concerts and festivals and on street corners, trying to fix Texas ' abysmal voting statistics. Travis County alone had 5,800 volunteer deputy registrars who registered tens of thousands of voters. North Texas, too, has seen record numbers of registrations.

That's good news. But it's also worrisome.

Texas is one of only 12 states without online registration. The more I learn about our registration process, the more convinced I am that we need online options-and that our clunky, archaic, expensive registration system is a form of voter suppression.

First of all, in order to register voters, you must be deputized, but Texas has no statewide deputization. Each county deputizes its own registrars. In addition, there is no standard registration form. As a Dallas County volunteer deputy registrar, if I encounter, as I often did, voters from Tar rant, Collin, Den ton or any other nearby county, I can only provide a postage¬ paid mail in form and hope they follow through.

(And, by the way, my friend Clif went to four different places to find a Collin County mail¬ in form. He could also have printed out a form, if he'd had a stamp and envelope handy.

Many people don't these days, and the effort necessary is one more obstacle. ) Deputization requires traveling to the county election office, taking a quick class, and getting a certificate.

That's not a terrible hardship, but then all registrations from that county must be delivered to the elections office within five days. So for a Dallas volunteer deputy registrar, even just one form from a Tar rant County voter requires hustling to the far reaches of Fort Worth by the deadline. (And, of course, volunteers are not paid for time or gas. ) Oh, and by the way, Tar rant County ran out of registration forms by National Voter Registration Day. The volunteer deputy registrars were scrounging forms from each other, running all over town to deliver them.

Now that the deadline for registering for the midterms has passed, new problems loom. Will all those hundreds of thousands of handwritten forms be entered into the system in time for early voting? People who registered near deadline might not get their cards before early voting, if even by Election Day. To know if you're registered, you'll want to check your status online at teamrv¬mvp.sos.texas.gov/ MVP/ voter Details.do.

Denton County elections administrator Frank Phillips told The Dallas Morning News it takes three to five minutes to enter data from a registration form. My amazing friend Daniel is responsible for adding 2,700 voters to the rolls. At four minutes per form, his contribution alone would take one person about 22 eight¬ hour days to enter.

Phillips also said that if residents who try to vote early can't be confirmed at the poll, officials will call the elections office to verify the voter's status.

Really? We' re talking about thousands of handwritten documents. If the voter's information isn't in the system, will office workers be able to find it while the voter waits? Or will the person be provided a provisional ballot, which might be open to challenge? Voters who registered with a volunteer deputy registrar will have a receipt to prove they registered, but what of mail¬ in registrations? In the course of registering voters, I had to persuade a number of people that no, really, Texas does not have online registration. They simply could not believe it, and I don't blame them.

This system is a mess.

The simplest fix would be to go to statewide online voter registration, and it would save money. The Pew Center on the States reports that in Mari cop a County in Arizona, each online registration costs three cents to process; each paper registration costs 83 cents.

But if we must do it old ¬school, we should at least have statewide deputization and a standardized form. To increase voter turnout in Texas, this is one process we could and should streamline.

Sophia Dem bling is a writer in Dallas. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.