New Study Shows Texas Doing the Least It Can to Increase Voter Turnout
Texas voter turnout is abysmal at every level. It doesn't matter if you're voting in a school board election, for your next mayor, for your favored presidential nominee or for the president; you're among the minority in the Lone Star State to show up and make your voice heard.
The headlines after every election show that things aren't getting better, either. It doesn't have to be that way, though, according to a new study from the Center for American Progress. With a few small tweaks, researchers Danielle Root and Liz Kennedy say, the state could add millions of voters to its rolls.
The biggest thing Texas could do, according to Root and Kennedy, is implement automatic voter registration in the state. Automatic voter registration is exactly what it sounds like. When a resident of a participating state turns 18, he or she automatically becomes eligible to vote unless he or she actively opts out of registering. By July 2019, 14 states will have automatic voter registration. Another 10 are set to vote on it by the end of the year.
Using stats from states that already have automatic voter registration, Root and Kennedy extrapolate that if Texas were to begin signing voters up automatically, the state would immediately gain about 1.9 million new registered voters, the second most in the country behind California. Of those 1.9 million, Root and Kennedy say, about 700,000 could be expected to show up to vote.
Read more: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/heres-how-texas-could-fix-its-non-voting-problem-10897070
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