HARVEY RICE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
GALVESTON – Voter registration restrictions imposed by the Texas Legislature last session are unnecessary and make it more difficult to register voters, former Texas Gov. Mark White testified Tuesday in Galveston federal court.
“I think there was very little reason for that and I don’t know of any reason today for a person not to be a voter registrar anywhere in Texas,” White said about a requirement that deputy registrars can only register voters in their home county.
Those laws are aimed at preventing fraud, Assistant Attorney General Kathlyn Wilson argued.
White, who was Texas Secretary of State from 1974 to 1977 before he was elected governor in 1982, testified on the last day of a hearing in which Voting for America and two Galveston County residents are asking U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa to block the state from enforcing parts of eight voter registration laws pending the outcome of a trial.
Suit targets 8 laws
The plaintiffs are suing Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade and Galveston County Tax Assessor-Collector Cheryl Johnson, arguing that those eight laws regulating voter registration violate the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and Voting for America’s constitutional rights. The eight sections and five additional sections of the law will be challenged during the full trial.
Costa heard final arguments in the two-day hearing and gave attorneys one week to submit further information.
Costa gave no hint of how he might rule in his questioning of attorneys for both sides.
Voting for America, a national organization that registers minorities and low-income voters, is seeking a preliminary injunction on laws that make it a criminal offense for a volunteer deputy registrar to submit an incomplete voter registration form or submit it later than five days.
It argues the laws impose training requirements that make it difficult to train deputy registrars, require that deputy registrars deliver forms in person rather than by mail, that deputy registrars can be dismissed for turning in incomplete forms and that deputy registrars cannot be paid.
‘No regulation model’
A section that says deputy registrars cannot be from out of state would ban Voting for America managers, the organization argues.
Michael Slater, Project Vote executive director, testified Monday that Texas laws are some of the most restrictive in the nation, preventing large-scale registration drives.
“They have this kind of perfect world where there is no regulation model,” Wilson said. The laws are, “narrowly drawn to track the registration from the voters hands,” she said.
Attorney Chad Dunn, representing Voting for America, said the state was more worried about voter fraud than about the large number of unregistered voters. “I wish the state would have the same zeal about all these people who aren’t registered,” Dunn said. READ MORE.