Last day to register is tomorrow

Still not registered to vote in Texas? Tomorrow's your last chance to fix that oversight.

Tuesday is the last day to register to vote for the November general election.

Registration forms can be picked up at local Department of Public Safety offices, local libraries and at the Secretary of State's office. Residents also can sign up at a local voter registration office.

Applications are available online at www.sos.state.tx.us/elections as well.

The applications must be either hand-delivered to the county voter registrar by Tuesday or postmarked that day.

Remember, if you don't vote, you don't get to complain about the outcomes.

Overall, there's been a lag in voter registrations in Harris County.

A new state database required by federal law has made it easier to track people moving around Texas.

When a voter registers in a different county, the database flags the duplication and allows the old county to remove the name.

The system was activated in January, and about 5,000 names have been removed from the Harris County roll so far, said Paul Bettencourt, Harris County tax assessor-collector, whose office handles the local voter roll.

It's a small number in a county with nearly 2 million voters, but it's still more than 12 percent of all voter purges since last November.

The main reason fewer people are registered now is that fewer are signing up, Bettencourt said. Tuesday is the last day to register for the Nov. 7 election.

"We've been flat as a pancake. This is a really weak year," Bettencourt said, despite an abundance of voter-registration drives.

[...]

In Harris County, officials have been busy pruning invalid names even as they urge new voters to sign up.

More than 40,000 names have been chopped from the roll since last November, typically in a process that begins when new registration cards mailed to voters every two years are returned undeliverable.

Such registrants are removed from the roll if they don't vote in one of the next two federal elections, conducted in even-numbered years.

Voters who don't change residence stay on the roll and receive a new card every other year, even if they don't vote.

Bettencourt also scours driver's license records, the U.S. Postal Service change-of-address database and the Social Security office's list of the deceased.

[...]

About 1.91 million voters are registered in Harris County, down from 1.95 million in 2004, or about 80 percent of those eligible to register.

Voter registration, along with voting, always peaks in presidential election years.

About 55,000 people have registered in Harris County since March this year. That compares with 155,000 for the same period in 2004, when President Bush and Sen. John Kerry were in a tight election battle.

This year's number also is much smaller than the 92,000 registrations in 2002, the last nonpresidential election year for federal offices such as the U.S. House and Senate.

I don't quite understand the math here. Forty thousand deletions plus 55,000 new registrations sounds like an increase to me, not a decrease. Even if you assume that the new county-comparison database effect is separate, that's only 45,000 removals. Either the other factors (such as deaths) are included but not enumerated or something doesn't add up.

Be that as it may, there's a separate point to highlight:

Although the hottest national voting issues involve the security of electronic voting systems and what identification should be required for voting, a third issue is emerging along with the fierce debate about illegal immigration.

In testimony before Congress earlier this year, Bettencourt said nothing prevents potential voters from falsely indicating they are citizens on their registration cards.

Well, there is the state law against making a false statement on a registration application:

§ 13.007. FALSE STATEMENT ON APPLICATION.

(a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly makes a false statement or requests, commands, or attempts to induce another person to make a false statement on a registration application.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class B misdemeanor.
(c) For purposes of this code, an offense under this section is considered to be perjury, but may be prosecuted only under this section.

A Class B misdemeanor can mean a fine of up to $2500 and up to 180 days in jail. I'd say that's not nothing, but maybe Paul Bettencourt has a different definition of the word in mind. His suggestion of "some sort of national database of citizens that local voter registrars could use" is one that might have merit, but given the aggressive campaign against voting rights by Republicans here and elsewhere, I'm not at all inclined to accept this as a good faith proposal on his part.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 09, 2006 to Election 2006 | TrackBack