Tag Archives: Ashley Lopez KUT Austin

Missing Out: Texas High Schools Way Behind On Voter Registration Mandate

Ask any teacher or principal at a Texas High School, and they can immediately tell you that in their job, they have a lot to do.  Teaching course curriculum, supervising their classrooms, meeting benchmarks, planning for the safety of their schools.  It’s a lot to contend with in most any machination.

Given that this is the case, it’s probably not a surprise that most Texas High School Administrators are paying less attention to the state laws around voting than they are the state graduation requirements.  As Ashley Lopez of KUT Austin reports, this seems to be the case for an overwhelming majority of our state’s high schools.

Roughly a third of Texas high schools have requested voter registration forms from the Texas Secretary of State’s office, a new report from the Texas Civil Rights Project finds.

Requesting forms from the state agency is the first step schools must take so they can register students to vote. Texas law requires schools to give eligible students these forms at least twice each school year.

While the percentage of schools following the law is low at 34 percent, it’s higher than what it was in 2016 – a mere 14 percent.

Researchers looked at requests for voter registration forms by high schools “from the close of voter registration for the last presidential election (October 2016) to the close of voter registration for this year’s first round primaries (February 2018).”

With 66 percent of Texas High Schools not requesting a single Voter Registration form for eligible students, the news can seem pretty bleak.  But a couple of factors can affect this particular law.  For one thing, the Texas Civil Rights Project report strongly suspects that most high schools don’t even know this law exists, as it has not been enforced in recent memory.  Because the state never talks about this law, there’s a good chance many principals do not know about it.  So putting the knowledge out there will help to recruit some school administrators that may not have previously known to comply.

But as disheartening as the news maybe, it also presents a rare opportunity.  With more than sixty days to go before the 2018 General Election Voter Registration Deadline (October 9th), parents, students, and concerned community members have the ability to inquire about these practices at their local schools.  With some careful planning and hard work, there is still time to get many more interested students access to Voter Registration Forms.

If you’re an administrator reading this post, here is the direct link to the form needed to request official Voter Registration Forms be sent to your High School.  Though we all hope the day when the Texas Secretary of State will simply send the forms to our schools and HELP our students to exercise their rights as citizens, we can still make an impact right now.

Most voting age citizens of Texas also have the ability to become Volunteer Deputy Voter Registrars, which is a great way to encourage voter registration in your community.  Many groups even organize workshops to help citizens through the process, but here are the steps to become a VDVR directly from the Texas Secretary of State website.

Run ’18: Texas Democrats Prepare For Most Active Primary Election in Decades

Do you hear it??

Off in the distance, there’s a big blue stampede starting in Texas.  If you can’t hear it yet, just wait until February and March.

For years now, Texas Democrats have been trapped in something of an electoral feedback loop.  Save for a few gerrymandered districts, the party has been unable to gain traction across the state, with virtually no hope of taking a statewide office or gaining a legislative majority anywhere outside of the city hall or county courthouse.  The loop basically works like this… in order to recruit down-ballot candidates to run, Democrats first need to find an inspiring top-ticket candidate.  But the only way to find a top-ticket candidate was for them to rise up from a crop of good down-ballot candidates.

But, as all things seem to be in 2017, new rules abound.  As Ashley Lopez of KUT Austin reports, Texas Democrats are done sitting on the sidelines, and ready to run next year…

In deep-red Texas, Republicans will have to fight for every congressional seat in next year’s midterm elections. For the first time in 25 years, Democrats are running in all of Texas’ 36 congressional districts, according to documents filed with the Texas Secretary of State’s office.

Mark Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, says those filings set a record for the number of Democratic challengers in an era of Republican dominance, and are a departure from 2016 – when eight Republican-held congressional seats went uncontested by Democrats.

“We are seeing a groundswell of unusually high support and mobilization among progressive Democrats who are really angered by the Trump administration,” Jones said.

But, Democrats aren’t just gunning for congressional seats. According to preliminary numbers from the Texas Democratic Party, Democrats are running in 89 percent of the seats in the Texas House and 88 percent of the seats in the Texas Senate. Both are the highest percentages the party has mustered since at least 1992.

Though the Secretary of State’s office is still awaiting final certification from the Parties, you can view the impressive list of candidate filings hereIf you’re not yet registered to VOTE in the March 6th Primary Election, you can get that info at VoteTexas.gov.

Call it anger, inspiration, education… call it what you what.  As 2018 approaches, Texas Democrats seem to have found “it” again.  Finally a blue stampede is on for the Lone Star State.  But whether all of that motivation can finally turn into some results remains to be seen.  But like the big blue skies of a Texas Winter or the bluebonnets of a Texas Spring, hope springs eternal.

Historic times call for historic activities.  Along with a bigger-then-ever TLCQ 2018 series, Texas Leftist will also be working to report on select races as they unfold.  Keep your eyes and ears ready.